Temporary president Roberto Micheletti noticed Friday that he could revoke visas to the diplomats of the United States in Honduras, as Washington did de facto with four Honduran civil servants of the government.

In an official notice, the chancellery said that the “government reserves the right to apply reciprocity in the visa cancellation of the diplomatic or consular personnel of the United States in Tegucigalpa, without no exclusion”.

It indicated that the Honduran civil servants to whom cancelled visas “did not incur corruption crimes, terrorism, drug trafficking, embezzlement of bottoms public… and the affected ones can exert impugnativas actions before the judicial instances of the United States in accordance with their legislation (of that country)”.

While the Supreme Court criticized the decision of Washington to cancel the visa from entrance to the United States to its magistrate Arita Takings, liberal, measurement that considered “with the intention of to exert pressures on activities legitimately framed in the law and the independence of the judges”. Arita signed the order to arrest the 28 of June to dethroned president Manuel Zelaya.

The estadunidense government also cancelled visas of the minister of Defense, Adolph Seville, of the commissioner of human rights, Ramon Guard, and of the president of the Congress, Alfredo Saavedra.

Micheletti said that it will not allow the return of Zelaya and criticized to the estadunidense ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens, to meet Thursday with the agent chief executive overthrown in Managua.

“I repeat with clarity that if there is a solution that contemplates my retirement (of the position), I will make taste yet, but Zelaya will not return either to Honduras like governor… and he can come to the courts, wait for who it, but under to no we will let it circumstance take possession from the government”, he said to the designated agent chief executive the night of Thursday.

“The ambassador (Llorens) committed a serious error… and that is an act of interference” in the Honduran internal subjects, indicated.

Criminal judge of Tegucigalpa Humberto Palacios ordered the police to arrest Zelaya she finds where it and to three civil servants of its government to falsify documents public, fraud and abuse of office when contracting propaganda in January by two million dollars in the average unfounded premises legal and before a nonexistent state of emergencia. Of those Zelaya crimes he could be in favor eleven years in prison at least.

Thus, the dethroned president faces seven positions now. The other four are treason to the mother country, to attempt against the form of democratic government, abuse of office and to usurp public functions, that altogether would mean 25 years in the jail.

In Nicaragua, the demoted president warned with a new outbreak of the violence in Honduras.

“Or the blow is reverted or comes the generalized violence”, affirmed to pro-government Channel 4. “The towns have right to the insurrection, so is the case of the Hondurans that they are brutally repressed”.

A person was wounded Friday when the police evacuated with tear gases to demonstrators who blocked the Pan-American highway in Santa Rosa de Copán, to about 300 kilometers to the west of the capital. There is a noncertain number of prisoners.

A confrontation between followers of Zelaya and the police left Thursday 26 injured and 88 lengthy ones. The governor was demoted by a military coup the 28 of June and the congress designated to Micheletti.

Micheletti noticed Thursday that “if in a while determined (Zelaya) it leaves that mountain (of Nicaragua, where it announced that it is prepared to reassume the power) where for of guerrilla, and it does not continue thinking about the presidency, it would look for a mediation so that there are not more problems because I want peace and tranquillity in my country”.

The mediation would be the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, Jorge Creek.

The present political situation of Honduras, has again brought to the arena the evident prevailing contradiction in Latin America, between democracy and freedom. That contradiction that threatens the freedom in our continent, was set out clearly by Lord Acton, that it said: “the dogma of which the absolute power, by the hypothesis of its popular origin, can be as legitimate as the constitutional freedom, has begun to darken the atmosphere”.

That darkened atmosphere is the one that reigns to a large extent of the countries of Latin America, in which their respective presidents have modified the constitution in order to extend their power and to aprbar the successive re-election. That is the perpetuation in the power.

During some time I thought that the reality of that existing ideological political confrontation in Latin America, would make appearance in a war between Colombia and Venezuela. War of which it would be divides the United States, by all means of the side of Colombia. The one is that country that at present negotiates a military agreement with the United States, so that it uses three Colombian military bases in the fight against the drug trafficking and the terrorism. Despite the reality of the collaboration of Chávez with the CRAF, the war one did not take place.

That collaboration properly was verified during the Colombian operation in Ecuador against a camping of the CRAF in that country, under the rule of another AT látere of Chávez, Mr. Correa. In spite of it president Uribe met finally with tyrant the elective one of Venezuela, to reach an agreement, that everything seems to indicate that Chávez does not fulfill except for the maintenance of the commercial relations with Colombia.

Already in that one opportunity the OAS, directed by Mr. Insulza, took party by Ecuador blaming the Colombian Armed Forces by to have violated the Ecuadorian sovereignty. We do not know that position will have to take now that a representative of the CRAF informed on his economic collaboration for the presidential campaign of Strap. A second manifest step of the prevailing ideology in its thought and as well as dependency of Chávez, was when it proposed “DULL” the proposal to incorporate to Cuba to the OAS. Proposal that obtained the support of president Obama, and today Cuba can be in the OAS, and Honduras is on the brink of madness being expelled from the same, by “to have violated the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Letter”.

I would say that Honduras is today before crossroads, by to have committed the CRIME to demote a president who violated the National Constitution. At the time of to have made that decision would seem that the destinies were not to him favorable, as it happened to him to Cuba when John F. Kennedy gained the elections of 1960. That electoral triumph marked the destiny of Cuba that outside given to the Soviet orbit and the Cubans to suffer the communist dictatorship by more than fifty years.

One feels like to me that the shade of Kennedy goes up to around the White House. Thus we have been able to see what I consider an unhealthy tendency in the relations with Latin America, according to which Obama seems to accept the prevailing anti-imperialist principles in the zone. A policy according to that attitude was carried out also by Mr. Carter, who desaconociera the reality of which the military, errors and excesses separate, avoided that the continent to the South of the Rio Grande became Cuba.

He was so under the influence of Mr. Sun Linowitz and by all means of his adviser, today again in the White House, the Brzesinski Marxist also would try an approach with Fidel Castro. That policy was disqualified by Jeane Kirpatrick, as of double moral in its book “Dictatorships and Double Stantandards”, (Dictatorship and Double Registers Morals). There it maintained that the Department of State supported the dictators who him oponín and was overthrown alos supported that it. Example the Shah of Iran.

That double moral is to him today being applied to Honduras by the United States. It does not surprise of course that the same is shared by the countries of Latin America, today supposedly living in a democracy that based on the supposed majorities, does not know the individual rights… One is unknown that role of the Constitution is indeed the one to limit the political power. In that situation are the defending majors of Zelaya, tales.com Chávez, Strap, Morals and Grouse. In Cuba I castrate took that work not even to manage to hold absolute the political power. To the eyes of Insulza and apparently of Obama, I castrate seems democratic whereas Micheletti would be coup participant.

That the majority of the Latin American countries has incurred that double moral is not to be surprised. As we can be strange to us that Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay unconditionally support to Zelaya and the intransigente position of Insulza, if their respective presidents have been going to render pleitesía to Fidel Castro. However that the United States tries to not know the fact that the freedom is based on the limitation of the political power and the recognition of the individual rights, it is as Thomas Sowell would say, a mortal although nonimmediate danger…

. The principles of the constitutional freedom based on the limitation of the political power and the respect by the individual rights, are recognized in the history of the United States, and as well as eloquently specified by the Founding Fathers. I must remember then Letter 51 of the Federalist where James Madison expressed: “a society under the form of which the most powerful faction can be united and press to weakest, can say that the anarchy really reigns, like in the nature state where the weakest individual is not safe against the violence of more hard”.

That was the evident intention of Zelaya when to called a plebiscite, that violated the national constitution, to modify the constitution. Therefore I consider a true contradiction between policy of President Obama and the constitutional principles of the United States, supporting the position of the OAS, as much with respect to the incorporation of Cuba like the expulsion of Honduras.

We would not have to continue confusing the problems of the terrorism with the drug trafficking. That confusion apparently has implied historically that they are not solved neither. The terrorism is ideological and its intention is the search of absolute the political power, (Tyranny). The drug trafficking is the product of the economic interest, that superb by the illegality of drugs. The thus United States in this aspect at the same time as it provides the market, because the consumers are not delinquent, considers the production and sale of drugs criminal. The collusion of the drug trafficking with the terrorist guerrilla in an act of circumstantial common interests, and also corrupts the supposedly legal governments.

Recently a new report of the United States involves to Chávez with the drug trafficking. We hope that this data modifies the Kennediana policy favorably, and clearly the ideological one faces problematic that more and more the freedom in Latin America threatens. Finally it is not that it is in discord with the possible elimination of the embargo (called blockade by the left) to Cuba. Although the establishment of the embargo was a indubitable legal right at the time, its result has been politically counter-productive.What if I am it is completely in discord it is that it is tried to have a discussion in the government more criminal than human eyes will see in the Earth more Fermosa.

The present political situation of Honduras, has again brought to the arena the evident prevailing contradiction in Latin America, between democracy and freedom. That contradiction that threatens the freedom in our continent, was set out clearly by Lord Acton, that it said: “the dogma of which the absolute power, by the hypothesis of its popular origin, can be as legitimate as the constitutional freedom, has begun to darken the atmosphere”.

That darkened atmosphere is the one that reigns to a large extent of the countries of Latin America, in which their respective presidents have modified the constitution in order to extend their power and to aprbar the successive re-election. That is the perpetuation in the power.

During some time I thought that the reality of that existing ideological political confrontation in Latin America, would make appearance in a war between Colombia and Venezuela. War of which it would be divides the United States, by all means of the side of Colombia. The one is that country that at present negotiates a military agreement with the United States, so that it uses three Colombian military bases in the fight against the drug trafficking and the terrorism. Despite the reality of the collaboration of Chávez with the CRAF, the war one did not take place.

That collaboration properly was verified during the Colombian operation in Ecuador against a camping of the CRAF in that country, under the rule of another AT látere of Chávez, Mr. Correa. In spite of it president Uribe met finally with tyrant the elective one of Venezuela, to reach an agreement, that everything seems to indicate that Chávez does not fulfill except for the maintenance of the commercial relations with Colombia.

Already in that one opportunity the OAS, directed by Mr. Insulza, took party by Ecuador blaming the Colombian Armed Forces by to have violated the Ecuadorian sovereignty. We do not know that position will have to take now that a representative of the CRAF informed on his economic collaboration for the presidential campaign of Strap. A second manifest step of the prevailing ideology in its thought and as well as dependency of Chávez, was when it proposed “DULL” the proposal to incorporate to Cuba to the OAS. Proposal that obtained the support of president Obama, and today Cuba can be in the OAS, and Honduras is on the brink of madness being expelled from the same, by “to have violated the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Letter”.

I would say that Honduras is today before crossroads, by to have committed the CRIME to demote a president who violated the National Constitution. At the time of to have made that decision would seem that the destinies were not to him favorable, as it happened to him to Cuba when John F. Kennedy gained the elections of 1960. That electoral triumph marked the destiny of Cuba that outside given to the Soviet orbit and the Cubans to suffer the communist dictatorship by more than fifty years.

One feels like to me that the shade of Kennedy goes up to around the White House. Thus we have been able to see what I consider an unhealthy tendency in the relations with Latin America, according to which Obama seems to accept the prevailing anti-imperialist principles in the zone. A policy according to that attitude was carried out also by Mr. Carter, who desaconociera the reality of which the military, errors and excesses separate, avoided that the continent to the South of the Rio Grande became Cuba.

He was so under the influence of Mr. Sun Linowitz and by all means of his adviser, today again in the White House, the Brzesinski Marxist also would try an approach with Fidel Castro. That policy was disqualified by Jeane Kirpatrick, as of double moral in its book “Dictatorships and Double Stantandards”, (Dictatorship and Double Registers Morals). There it maintained that the Department of State supported the dictators who him oponín and was overthrown alos supported that it. Example the Shah of Iran.

That double moral is to him today being applied to Honduras by the United States. It does not surprise of course that the same is shared by the countries of Latin America, today supposedly living in a democracy that based on the supposed majorities, does not know the individual rights… One is unknown that role of the Constitution is indeed the one to limit the political power. In that situation are the defending majors of Zelaya, tales.com Chávez, Strap, Morals and Grouse. In Cuba I castrate took that work not even to manage to hold absolute the political power. To the eyes of Insulza and apparently of Obama, I castrate seems democratic whereas Micheletti would be coup participant.

That the majority of the Latin American countries has incurred that double moral is not to be surprised. As we can be strange to us that Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay unconditionally support to Zelaya and the intransigente position of Insulza, if their respective presidents have been going to render pleitesía to Fidel Castro. However that the United States tries to not know the fact that the freedom is based on the limitation of the political power and the recognition of the individual rights, it is as Thomas Sowell would say, a mortal although nonimmediate danger…

. The principles of the constitutional freedom based on the limitation of the political power and the respect by the individual rights, are recognized in the history of the United States, and as well as eloquently specified by the Founding Fathers. I must remember then Letter 51 of the Federalist where James Madison expressed: “a society under the form of which the most powerful faction can be united and press to weakest, can say that the anarchy really reigns, like in the nature state where the weakest individual is not safe against the violence of more hard”.

That was the evident intention of Zelaya when to called a plebiscite, that violated the national constitution, to modify the constitution. Therefore I consider a true contradiction between policy of President Obama and the constitutional principles of the United States, supporting the position of the OAS, as much with respect to the incorporation of Cuba like the expulsion of Honduras.

We would not have to continue confusing the problems of the terrorism with the drug trafficking. That confusion apparently has implied historically that they are not solved neither. The terrorism is ideological and its intention is the search of absolute the political power, (Tyranny). The drug trafficking is the product of the economic interest, that superb by the illegality of drugs. The thus United States in this aspect at the same time as it provides the market, because the consumers are not delinquent, considers the production and sale of drugs criminal. The collusion of the drug trafficking with the terrorist guerrilla in an act of circumstantial common interests, and also corrupts the supposedly legal governments.

Recently a new report of the United States involves to Chávez with the drug trafficking. We hope that this data modifies the Kennediana policy favorably, and clearly the ideological one faces problematic that more and more the freedom in Latin America threatens. Finally it is not that it is in discord with the possible elimination of the embargo (called blockade by the left) to Cuba. Although the establishment of the embargo was a indubitable legal right at the time, its result has been politically counter-productive.What if I am it is completely in discord it is that it is tried to have a discussion in the government more criminal than human eyes will see in the Earth more Fermosa.

Obama's birth certificate and the real issues

Thomas LifsonI doff my cap and bow low to Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online, who has produced essential reading for anyone wondering what to think about the birther controversy rocking the right, and now breaking into the mainstream media, which sees an opportunity to mock and discredit the right.

He and I agree: the entire Kenyan birth theory is a distraction, and a useful tool in the hands of Alinskyites on the ridicule and destroy mission. But before moving on to other significant issues, McCarthy acknowledges that NRO's editorial yesterday accidentally mischaracterized the nature of the documentation that is available from Hawaii. He writes:

The information in the certification may be identical as far as it goes to what's in the complete state records, but there are evidently many more details in the state records than are set forth in the certification. Contrary to the editors' description, those who want to see the full state record - the certificate or the so-called "vault copy" - are not on a wild-goose chase for a "secondary document cloaked in darkness." That confuses their motives (which vary) with what they've actually requested (which is entirely reasonable). Regardless of why people may want to see the vault copy, what's been requested is a primary document that is materially more detailed than what Obama has thus far provided.

McCarthy then lays out the real issue: Obama's extraordinary secrecy, amounting to a scrubbing of his paper trail, combined with his demonstrated record of lying about his past. Obama is a phony, though and through. A former assistant US Attorney, McCarthy economically but methodically assembles the evidence, including sources, that Obama has presented a false story of his life. He lists a startling number of lies about his life story, with documentation.

The major media have done their best to obscure the existence of oddities in Obama's life story that never made it to the two autobiographical works purportedly authored by him. It has been left to the blogosphere to point out his many lies about his past. Yet the general public remains blissfully unaware of these lies, though it does know everything about Sarah Palin's family thanks to inquiring minds of the media.

Even worse, the mainstream media twice dug up intimate details of the lives of two men who stood in his way in acquiring his seat in the United States Senate. Richard Baehr explained this on AT in 2006:

In 2004, then-State Senator Obama trailed badly in third place just weeks before the Democratic primary for the open Illinois US Senate seat being vacated by Peter Fitzgerald. The leader was investment banker Blair Hull, who had spent about $40 million on an ad campaign that got him name recognition and a big lead in the polls.

Then the Chicago Tribunepeeked into his bedroom, and revealed that he was an alleged wife beater. Hull's campaign collapsed and most of his support swung to Obama, who was a poorly funded candidate going nowhere until the Tribune story destroyed Hull's candidacy.

Next, the Tribunereleased supposedly sealed divorce documents concerning Republican nominee Jack Ryan, revealing he was a bit too kinky in his sexual tastes for his former wife. Ryan pulled out of the race, and the Illinois Republican Party, true to its decade long death wish, nominated Alan Keyes to oppose Obama. Suddenly, the unknown State Senator was now US Senator Obama with a smashing 71% share of the vote.

Obama is, in other words, a manufactured candidate. His way was paved by the media, he has lied about who he is, and he continues to lie in ways big and small. This realization is slowly dawning on people beyond the readership of the conservative internet-based media.. Growing numbers of Americans are coming to realize that they have bought into a false picture of Barack Obama. They thought he was post-racial, a healer who loves white people and can bring closure to the trauma of the legacy of slavery. His gut-level response to the Gates arrest revealed a man still angry about race, who has little regard for the men and women on the thin blue line. Also, somebody who doesn't know how to admit he was wrong.

Once a mind is open to the concept that it has been deceived, it becomes far more curious about deceptions. This is the momentum which could well be the undoing of Obama.

Citizenship - Indonesia, not Kenya

Forget Nairobi, focus on Jakarta. McCarthy writes:

Shortly after divorcing Barack Obama Sr., Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, married an Indonesian Muslim, Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo, whom she met - just as she had met Barack Sr. - when both were students at the University of Hawaii. At some point, Soetoro almost certainly adopted the youngster, who became known as "Barry Soetoro." Obama's lengthy, deeply introspective autobiographies do not address whether he was adopted by the stepfather whose surname he shared for many years, but in all likelihood that did happen in Hawaii, before the family moved to Jakarta.

Under Indonesian law, adoption before the age of six by an Indonesian male qualified a child for citizenship. According to Dreams from My Father, Obama was four when he met Lolo Soetoro; his mother married Soetoro shortly thereafter; and Obama was already registered for school when he and his mother relocated to Jakarta, where Soetoro was an oil-company executive and liaison to the Suharto government. That was in 1966, when Obama was five. Obama attended Indonesian elementary schools, which, in Suharto's police state, were generally reserved for citizens (and students were required to carry identity cards that matched student registration information). The records of the Catholic school Obama/Soetoro attended for three years identify him as a citizen of Indonesia. Thus Obama probably obtained Indonesian citizenship through his adoption by Soetoro in Hawaii. That inference is bolstered by the 1980 divorce submission of Ann Dunham and Lolo Soetoro, filed in Hawaii state court. It said "the parties" (Ann and Lolo) had a child (name not given) who was no longer a minor (Obama was 19 at the time). If Soetoro had not adopted Obama, there would have been no basis for the couple to refer to Obama as their child - he'd have been only Ann Dunham's child.

There are many other points made in this long, thorough, and clear article. There are many things the American people legitimately deserve to know about the past of the President who leads them. And reasons to look into the legally murky question of whether he is a natural born citizen.

As McCarthy asks in a section heading: "When did information suddenly become a bad thing?" The born overseas scenario is a distraction, but the refusal to release the far more informative vault copy is a symbol of the cover-up of his true life story.If the media had not abandoned its watchdog role for Obama, while aggressively pushing it on two strategically situated opponents, he would never have become president.

Obama's birth debate: It's about loyalty

The birth debate about Obama is real enough, but it is legally complicated, as analyzed by legal beagle Andrew McCarthy at National Review. No judge is going to question the Constitutional qualifications of an elected president. I'm sorry, but that's the practical reality. The judge is going to follow stare decisis -- the sheer weight of commitments that cannot be reversed without creating chaos. Once the political system of the United States, the voters, the media, and the politicians themselves are all committed to the proposition that Obama is president, trying to reverse it would mean riots in every city in the nation. At some point even debatable claims become irreversible. That is why Al Franken is now the US Senator from Minnesota, even if his election was corrupt and wrong. It's water under the bridge. Leave it to history.

And yet the Obama "birther" debate is important. What's important about it is the feeling a growing number of Americans have in their bones that Obama is foreign -- to our traditions, loyalties and shared understandings about the nature of America. In a way the legal debate matters less than that bone-deep sense that Obama is fundamentally "Other than American."

We all recognized George W as a prototypical American -- even if you didn't agree with him or even like him. There he was cutting dry brush around his modest West Texas ranch house, to keep down the fire danger, while the fat and foolish White House punditry stayed huddled back in the air conditioning. Or flying onto the aircraft carrier in a jet trainer after Saddam was overthrown. Or heading straight to walk Ground Zero with the cops and fire fighters right after 9/11. Bush looked at home with those cops, because he was. He likes those guys, and they like him. They are made of the same stuff. Obama isn't.

Obama is a socialist, which means that his deepest commitment is not to our nation but to the Internationalist Ruling Class. That is why the Left always has to argue that Americans' love of country will kill off the rest of the world -- by global warming, by overpopulation, any excuse will do. The fact that it's all lies proves the point: The Left must lie in order to convince millions of Americans that their normal feelings of patriotism are evil.

These facts are so obvious that they are not even worth arguing about. Obama's first international speech -- characteristically before getting elected -- started with the phrase "Citizens of the World!" Anybody on the Left has to think, "Workers of the World, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!" That was the intended message to the left, of course -- that's how David Axelrod thinks, that's how Obama's mentors have always thought -- going back to his way-left mother and his Kenyan socialist father. The interracial affair between the Kansas anthropologist 20-year-old and the Kenyan socialist was itself a revolutionary act, the way these people think. It was a positive good to bear an interracial child, even if the kid was going to be abandoned by his father and mother. From that point onward the Old Left handled the whole chain of custody. Obama was passed along by leftie sponsors, one after the other. Frank Marshall Davis was the Communist Party guy in Hawaii, and wrote for the Hawaiian Communist Party rag. You can trace it link after link, following the Alinskyite chain all the way to the far left wing of the Chicago Machine, then 20 years of being preached at by Rev. Jeremiah Wright (whose brand of Christianity is only Marxism under a transparent layer of lies).

That's our Obama, and that's what he proudly proclaimed: Not Oh Say Can You See/ By the Dawn's Early Light, but Dreams from My (Kenyan Socialist) Father.

This is not a secret. Obama is foreign to America in a way that has little to do with his birth certificate. He could be American-born and still think in this very anti-American way. A lot of people are. But whatever he is legally, there is not a shred of doubt that he is steeped in an Anti-American way of thinking.

This is what I suspect the birther movement is about. Yes, the legalities are suspect. No, it will never make any practical difference. But most important, the birthers are aware of a deep intuition about Barry Soetoro Barack Hussein Obama: That he is profoundly out of tune with the meaning of America since the Founding. He is out of harmony with this country and this culture, like the dissonant scream of a power-saw biting into steel or concrete. He just grates on the American sensibility.

Obama is a Ruling Class Aristocrat -- by intuition, beliefs, and personal egomania. He was born to rule. It's partly that he has always gone to all the elite schools, from Hawaii to Harvard, just like Michelle. But he was put into those schools by the efforts of the left, which is a Socialist Ruling Class movement. The left in its own vision is always Ruling Class To Be that is being kept unjustly from taking over the world. That's why they hate real democracy, why they sneer at Coke and fries, and why capitalism is so bad: Because it constant caters to "vulgar" tastes.

(The fact that the left always claims to help the lowest of the low is just a political tactic. By digging up the most resentful victims -- by race, class or gender -- you bring out the most explosive revolutionary dynamite; it's the people who are the most envious and resentful, who want nothing more than to flip the world upside-down and watch destruction rain down. That's why the Left constantly appeals to the "idealism" of teenagers, the natural rebels. They all want to rock the world. And if it's not teens, it's illegal immigrants, sexual deviants, the homeless, drug addicts, criminals, the racially oppressed, those who hate themselves, the prostitutes, and the mentally ill. Karl Marx called them the Lumpen-Proletariat, the Eternal Underclass who want to smash whatever is. As the Nazi slogan said it, "Alles Muss Anders Sein" -- "Everything Must Be Different."

The left is about the overthrow of whatever is, whether good or bad. The Eternal Underclass is the cannon fodder of any revolution. They are the lowlifes who can be trusted to burn down the Reichstag, to smash the stores of the Jews -- or in Indonesia, of the Chinese -- and to hang the rich from the nearest lamp post. When blue collar workers started to make money the Left didn't rejoice in their new well-being and happiness. Rather, the left just looked for another Underclass: Those who felt oppressed by race, gender, sexual habits, whatever. For the left, any Underclass only exists to be manipulated by the Natural Ruling Class, the Aristocratic Vanguard, the Obamas of this world. That's the only political strategy of the left. That is why they constantly lie and still believe in their own moral superiority.)

So is Obama American-born? I don't know. I bet he never comes up with that vault copy birth certificate for us to examine. But it's never going to matter a hill of beans, because no judge wants to be accused of overthrowing a sitting President of the United States.

But is Obama in tune with the soul of this country as Americans have understood it since 1776?

I think we all know the answer to that.

That is what our political battles will be about, for years and years to come. Don't expect it to be solved soon. It's been going on for a century. It didn't end with American victory in the Cold War. It is most of all a battle for minds and hearts, not for territory -- although territory matters. Conservatives helped win the Cold War, but did not win the battle for the schools and universities. That is why Barry Soetoro Barack Hussein Obama is now President.

Members of Congress, pursuing President Barack Obama's health policy agenda, want to create a national health insurance exchange as a platform for a public health care plan to compete against private health insurance.

Variants of the exchange proposal are embodied in the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200), promoted by the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives,[1] and the Affordable Health Choices Act, sponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Chris Dodd (D-CT).[2] Both of these huge bills are backed by the President and the Democratic congressional leadership.

While a national health insurance exchange is sometimes described as a nationwide pool of health insurance providers that would facilitate access to coverage for individuals and employers, its major function would be to provide a platform for a government-run public health plan that, using Medicare-style administrative pricing, would "compete" against private health insurance. Congressional champions of the idea say that this would increase the range of choice and competition available to Americans. In fact, it would do exactly the opposite.

In reality, the result would be a massive erosion of private health insurance. According to a recent analysis by the Lewin Group, the nation's most prominent health policy econometrics firm, assuming full implementation of the House bill, 103.9 million Americans would be covered under the public plan, and 83.4 million of them would no longer be covered by private health insurance.[3] Moreover, a federally designed health insurance exchange would consolidate federal control over the financing and delivery of Americans' medical services.

Initially, Americans may respond positively to the idea of a national health insurance exchange, but they are almost certainly unclear about its functions, how it would affect them, or which health policy problems it would solve. The maddeningly elastic language used in the health care debate can conceal as much as convey the true meaning of proposals embodied in the complex provisions of the mammoth House and Senate health care bills.

A Better Alternative: A State Option. A state-based health insurance exchange can indeed be a sound way to achieve a level playing field and a statewide market for a variety of different private health plans to compete directly for the business of employers and employees, individuals, and self-employed persons. That is why conservatives in Congress and elsewhere have promoted the exchange as a voluntary option for those states that could use such a mechanism as part of their reform of their often-dysfunctional health insurance markets.[4]

Though a health insurance exchange has been promoted as a policy initiative in many states, so far it has been translated into working models in two: Massachusetts and Utah.[5] Given the radical differences in these two states' insurance markets, regulatory climates, political cultures, and policy objectives, it is hardly surprising that the implementation and operation of a health insurance exchange is very different in these two states as well. It is further unsurprising that the concept has also been a source of seemingly limitless confusion as different proposals are advanced to achieve very different policy objectives.

The underlying policy objectives determine the functions of the health insurance exchange. In a truly competitive market based on real consumer choice and genuine competition, the suppliers of goods and services would operate on a level playing field and government would be confined to making and enforcing rules to protect consumers from fraud and misleading advertising, establishing minimum standards for health and safety, and enforcing contracts.

An exchange could facilitate that process. The government would not undermine competition by fielding its own enterprise with the special advantages of taxpayer subsidies, picking winners and losers, or imposing discriminatory tax or regulatory policies on different consumers or firms. The key to a level playing field is that the government would in no way favor one competitor over another or give any legal advantages to any player in the competition.

Federal Control. Based on the provisions of the House and Senate bills, as well as the proposals offered by President Obama, the structure and dynamics of the national exchange would be very different from those proposed by reformers who design state health insurance exchanges as optional mechanisms for consumer choice and competition.

Instead of a single market open to any willing private health plans, the leading House and Senate bills would allow participation only by plans that met highly prescriptive federal standards, foreclosing any other options for consumer choice and competition.

Instead of establishing a level playing field among different insurers, the House and Senate proposals would foreclose the possibility of anything even barely resembling a genuinely level playing field for fair competition.

Private health plans would assume all risks and remain subject to a variety of state and federal laws beyond the proposed House and Senate provisions for a level playing field.

With the new public health plan, taxpayers would retain the risk, and the public plan would function apparently free of the legal requirements that burden private health plans.[6]

With Congress fielding its own plan in competition against private health plans, taxpayers would be forced in effect to underwrite the marketing costs of an entity designed to displace their own private coverage. Based on recent experiences with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is certain that Congress would force taxpayers to underwrite the cost overruns of such a health insurance enterprise no matter how unsuccessful its performance. Medicare alone, a prime example of congressional micromanagement, has an accumulated unfunded liability of $38 trillion.[7] In a national health insurance exchange, taxpayers could be certain that the deck would be stacked against private-sector players in a game that is rigged from the start.

How Congress Would Create a Health Insurance Exchange

Among Administration and congressional champions of a national health insurance exchange, the structure or functions vary. Likewise, the intellectual rationale for the health insurance exchange is, based on the plain record, maddeningly elusive. If there is a specific health policy problem that a national health insurance exchange is designed to solve, it is not at all clear what exactly that problem is or why it simply cannot be solved by other, more direct and less intrusive means.

The Obama Proposal. President Obama proposed a national health insurance exchange as elemental to his health care reform agenda. There are precious few details in Obama's campaign documents on the national health insurance exchange itself or how it would function. He briefly described it as a "watchdog" agency.[8]

Thus, the national health insurance exchange would serve as a regulatory rather than purely administrative body. It would be a national rule-maker and enforce a common set of rating and insurance rules that would apply to private health plans within the national exchange, as well as to the public health plan itself. It would also serve as the regulatory vehicle to enforce the decisions of his proposed "institute" to judge the comparative effectiveness of medical treatments and procedures.

A version of this idea of an "institute," the 15-member Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, has already been enacted in the stimulus bill earlier this year. The new agency is charged with making determinations on the "comparative effectiveness" of different medical services, devices, drugs, and procedures. In short, in Obama's version, the national exchange would be not only an independent regulatory agency in itself, but also the central channel for the regulatory decisions of other federal agencies, governing both public and private insurance options.

Outside of this centralized system of muscular control, the rationale for the national exchange, at least as championed by independent health policy analysts, is somewhat elusive.

First, in sharp contrast to the champions of a statewide health insurance exchange--for whom the remedy of federal tax inequities is the primary rationale for its establishment--the President does not even mention the unfairness of existing federal tax policy, even though it undercuts millions of Americans' access to affordable health insurance.[9] If President Obama wanted to rectify this problem and advance progressive tax relief, as recommended by Jason Furman, one of his top economic advisers,[10] he could simply have proposed a consequential change in the federal treatment of health insurance and eliminated the unfairness and inefficiency of the current tax system. In other words, there would be no reason to create a national health insurance exchange to secure the objectives of a rational tax policy.

Second, the President is not pursuing a national exchange as a way to create a robust and competitive national market for health insurance. Health insurance is an odd exception to the general rule. There is a robust and competitive market for virtually every other set of goods and services in the economy, including complex items, and none of these requires the congressional creation of anything like a national exchange, administered by a commissioner, to facilitate their availability to consumers. If the President wanted to create a national market for health insurance, he could simply propose the repeal of outdated provisions of federal law that erect barriers to the purchase of health coverage across state lines. The President is obviously not interested in creating anything like a normal national, competitive market for health insurance.

Third, and most important, the national health insurance exchange would become the mechanism for the new government health plan to compete against private health insurance plans. This would seem to be its main function. The national health insurance exchange would be the "level playing field," or the arena for such a competition, and would thus serve as the key mechanism to secure the crowd-out of private health insurance coverage and pave the way for a single-payer system. As Martin Feldstein, professor of economics at Harvard University, has recently observed:

The Obama plan to have a government insurance provider that can undercut the premiums charged by private insurers would undoubtedly speed the arrival of such a single payer plan. It is hard to think of any other reason for the administration to want a government insurer when there is already a very competitive private insurance market that could be made more so by removing government restrictions on interstate competition.[11]

Again, based on the best independent evaluations of such an arrangement, millions of Americans throughout the United States would end up losing their private coverage, particularly if employers dumped workers and their families into the new public plan.

The House Tri-Committee Bill. Under Section 201 of Title II of the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, Congress would create a national health insurance exchange.[12] This exchange would be administered by a powerful Health Choices Commissioner who would head a new federal agency called the Health Choices Administration. The commissioner would be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Among the commissioner's chief duties would be to establish a process for the enrollment of eligible individuals and employers, to negotiate contracts with congressionally defined "qualified health plans," and to enforce statutory requirements relating to federally defined health benefits.

Under Section 208, the commissioner could approve health insurance exchanges created by a state or group of states that perform "all of the duties" of the national health insurance exchange and could terminate state exchanges that do not meet these federal standards.

Under Section 203, the commissioner would specify each year the health benefits and benefit levels (four levels are statutorily required based on cost-sharing) for health plans that participate in the national exchange,[13] consistent, of course, with congressionally determined benefit requirements. The commissioner would also establish a process for a phased-in enrollment of eligible individuals[14] and small businesses, and would have the authority to expand eligibility for enrollment in the exchange as the commissioner "deems appropriate." Assuming full implementation, the Lewin Group estimates that the number of Americans with private coverage would fall from 172.5 million to 83.4 million, or a 48.4 percent reduction in private coverage.[15]

Under Section 204, the commissioner has contracting authority to solicit bids and enter into negotiation with federally "qualified" health plans on an annual basis, with an option for automatic renewal. Congress further specifies that these plans must be licensed in the states in which they operate and must comply with the commissioner's requirements to provide requested data or other information, as well as the commissioner's standards and procedures for "grievances and complaints" and "network adequacy." The commissioner would also see to it that approved health plans implement the subsidies and credits for persons needing assistance, participate in "risk pooling" arrangements, provide for "culturally and linguistically appropriate services and communications," and make contracts with "essential community providers."[16]

Under Section 205, the commissioner is to establish outreach and enrollment processes for "exchange-eligible" individuals and for "vulnerable" populations, including adults and children with disabilities and cognitive impairments. Under Section 207, Congress would create a Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund for the deposit of funds to finance the operations of the Health Choices Administration.

The House Public Plan. Under Section 221 of Title I, the Congress would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to create a "public health insurance option" to be offered within the national exchange in 2013. The public plan would be required to offer the same benefits required by law for private health plans and obey the same insurance rules and other statutorily defined network and consumer protection requirements.

Under Section 222, the Secretary would set the premium to cover all benefit costs and projected administrative costs of the plan, as well as a "contingency margin." The bill would authorize an initial $2 billion for start-up costs and initial reserve requirements. Congressional sponsors insist that the public plan must be self-sustaining, based on its premium income.

Under Section 223 of Title I, the Secretary would set payment rates for doctors and hospitals and other medical professionals based on the Medicare payment rates, plus 5 percent for those health care professionals who also participate in the Medicare program. The bill would also abolish the Medicare update for physicians' services based on the Sustainable Growth Rate formula, a special formula for updating physicians' payment based on growth in the general economy.

By 2016, the Secretary would have greater flexibility in setting rates and would "modernize" payment for the public plan consistent with reforms in the delivery system to achieve higher quality care. For doctors and other medical professionals, Congress outlines the conditions for participation and would apply Medicare's existing anti-fraud and abuse rules to the public plan.

Because the payments in the House version of the public plan are based on Medicare payment rates, the Lewin Group estimates that the premiums for the public plan would be approximately 25 percent less than those obtainable in the private sector.[17] Payment below private market rates would ensure cost-shifting from the public plan to individuals enrolled in private health plans, which the Lewin Group estimates at $460 per person under the terms of the House bill.[18] Not surprisingly, moderate and conservative Democrats complain that the House bill tilts the playing field against private providers.[19]

Under Section 225, doctors who accept the payment in the public plan as payment in full would be "preferred physicians"; "non-preferred physicians" are those who agree to the balance-billing limitations that prevail in Medicare. For all physicians, the HHS Secretary would be authorized to make more detailed requirements, presumably through regulation, for "conditions of participation" in the public plan.

The Kennedy-Dodd Bill. Under Section 143 of Title I of the Senate bill, the Congress would create "affordable benefit gateways" that would function as a health insurance exchange for each state based on the proposed federal standards. The bill provides some flexibility for the states in setting up or administering these federally sponsored "gateways," and one gateway could operate in more than one state.

To assist the states in doing this, the HHS Secretary would provide grants and would have discretion over the amount of the grants given to the states. If a state was not making progress toward establishing a gateway in conformity with federal standards--for example, by including a public plan to compete against private health plans--the Secretary would have the power to intervene and establish such arrangements.

The gateway would fulfill the conventional administrative functions of a health insurance exchange, making health insurance available, providing information on the federally qualified health plans, and facilitating outreach to eligible individuals and their enrollment in plans provided through the gateway or other government programs such as Medicaid, SCHIP, or the new public plan. Gateways would also be able to contract with private entities, called "navigators," that would help to raise public awareness of the existence of the gateway and available health care plans. Health insurance plans that are not "qualified plans" could still operate outside of the gateway.

Under the Senate bill, the gateways would be required to establish a risk-adjustment system, thus providing an appropriate payment to health plans that have enrollees with health risks higher than the prevailing average in the state. Each year, the state-based gateways would also be required to report to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on their financial condition.

Under Title I of the Senate bill, the health benefits and medical procedures for health plans would be established by a new federal agency, a Medical Advisory Council. The council would be composed of medical experts who would make recommendations to the Secretary on what health benefits are "essential" and what would constitute "affordable coverage." The Senate bill would also provide a process for congressional review of the benefit decisions, and Congress could reject the Secretary's benefit decisions through a joint resolution of disapproval.

The Senate Public Plan. Under Title I of the Senate bill, Congress would create a new public plan, called the "community health insurance option," to compete against private health plans. This public plan would have to be offered in each state through the gateway and compete with private health plans in the gateway. Congress would establish a State Advisory Council to make recommendations to the Health and Human Services Secretary on the public plans' operations in each state.

The public plan would offer the "essential benefits" determined by the Medical Advisory Council, but the states could also require the public plan to offer additional benefits. The HHS Secretary would be authorized to set payment rates for doctors and hospitals, but they could not be higher than the "average rate" paid by health plans participating in the gateway. The HHS Secretary would also have the authority to contract with private entities to execute the duties associated with the public plan.

As with the House bill, the Senate bill would create a special trust fund for the financial operations of the public plan. The Senate sponsors intend that there would be no additional costs to the taxpayer beyond start-up costs and that premiums would cover the costs of the Senate version of the public plan.

The Baucus Proposal. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is trying to produce yet another major Senate health care bill. Outside of a legislative product, however, Senator Baucus has also proposed a national health insurance exchange that would "organize affordable health insurance options, create understandable, comparable information about those options and develop a standard application for enrollment in a chosen plan."[20]

In the Baucus proposal, health plans participating in the national exchange would be able to compete on the national, regional, state, or local level, and benefit packages could differ "within reason," but they would have to meet federal actuarial standards.[21] Congress, however, would not actually do the work of fixing the actuarial standard or defining the meaning of coverage or affordability. Like former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD),[22] Baucus would delegate such tasks to a special body of political appointees.

This is also congruent with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill, which would create a Medical Advisory Council, and the House Tri-Committee Bill, which, within statutory guidelines, would delegate authority to set health care benefits to the HHS Secretary with recommendations from an Advisory Benefit Committee whose members would be appointed by the Secretary.[23] In the Baucus proposal, a new agency, the Independent Health Coverage Council, would define the meaning of "affordability" and "coverage" for participating health plans, as well as standards for chronic care and quality reporting.[24] This would mean, of course, that Americans would be subjected to decisions over which they would practically have little or no control.

Under the Baucus proposal, health plan premiums would reflect differences in benefits, not risk, and premiums offered by plans in the national health insurance exchange would have to be the same as those offered outside of the exchange.[25]

In contrast to President Obama, Baucus appears to be more flexible: He would require a division of labor between federal and state authorities in the regulation of health insurance. While determinations of affordability, actuarial equivalence, and benefit standards would be federal responsibilities, all plans participating within the national health insurance exchange would be subject to state laws and regulations governing consumer protection, solvency, reserve requirements, and premium taxes.[26]

In short, the rules governing health plans in the national health insurance exchange would be both federal and state laws. The federal government would make rules governing the insurance coverage, and state governments would make and enforce rules governing consumer protection.

The National Health Exchange and a New Public Plan

Irrespective of their differences, leading congressional health care proposals are strikingly clear in their main features: centralized decision-making in Washington and a dominant role for the federal government at the expense of the states in regulating health insurance.

Control by Washington means that special-interest politics concentrated in the nation's capital would dominate Americans' health care decisions even more than they do today. As with Medicare, it would be inevitable. According to The Washington Post, health care industry lobbyists have made $298.9 million in contributions to Members of Congress since 1989, and nearly 60 percent of that amount has gone to Members who sit on the five key congressional committees that handle health care legislation.[27]

Decisions would focus on a myriad of issues: what is or is not to be covered in the health benefits package; which and how many plans can participate in the national health insurance exchange; which states--if any--will or will not be able to chart a more or less independent course. This would guarantee the frenzied lobbying of powerful special interests desperate to secure their competitive advantage.

It is fanciful to believe that government officials at HHS, a board, or a council would be able to devise a set of fair and equitable rules that would efficiently and effectively account for the very diverse and distinctive circumstances that prevail in different states across the country. Proposals to insulate such a process from special-interest politics by creating a body of politically appointed "experts," ensconced somewhere in the administrative offices of HHS, or a commissioner administering a National Health Exchange[28] reflect the triumph of fantasy over experience. No such body or official will be immune from either K Street lobbyists and their lucrative campaign coffers or powerful congressional committee chairmen.

Politics of the Public Plan. The introduction of a public, government-run health plan would further complicate the operation of a national health insurance exchange. If the exchange became a powerful regulatory agency--Obama's vision-- Congress would have equally powerful incentives to set the rules to the advantage of its own health plan. This could be done in a variety of ways: by setting the government's health plan premiums artificially low (using Medicare rates as in the House bill); by reducing or eliminating cost-sharing requirements; or by manipulating benefits to make the government health plan more attractive than the private health plans. Congress would have every incentive to make sure that its own creation did not incur the legal or financial risks that private firms ordinarily bear.

Because the public plan is a political creation, political decisions would overrule all other considerations concerning key items: benefit levels, premium levels, co-payments, the kinds of medical treatments that could or could not be included. The annual lobbying circus that accompanies annual Medicare legislation is instructive as congressional leaders fight to preserve or maintain existing federal reimbursements for favored groups against competition, most recently for payment for durable medical equipment and supplies.[29]

A massive crowd-out of private coverage would be accelerated under the employer mandate, embodied in both the House and Senate bills, as employers dropped private coverage and paid the requisite tax. Likewise, lobbyists for businesses or private insurance industry executives might see the government health program as a convenient dumping ground for high-risk individuals or families, which would reduce business and insurance industry costs but would also amount to significant adverse selection against the taxpayers. Faced with the rapidly rising costs of the public plan, let alone Medicare and Medicaid, taxpayers have demonstrably fewer lobbyists working on their behalf in Washington than those who are reimbursed with public or corporate money.

Double-Edged Sword? Lobbying for or against the policies and decisions of an administrator, council, or commissioner of a national health insurance exchange would be, of course, a two-way street. Once established, the legal and regulatory powers of such an agent or agency could turn out to be a double-edged sword, wielded by proponents of the public plan or advocates of private insurance. A public plan, after all, would be a wholly owned subsidiary of Congress.

Though admittedly far less likely, the political dynamics could run in a direction exactly the opposite of the "single-payer" conclusion for which the Left yearns so passionately. Congressional conservatives could decide--for budgetary or ideological reasons--to enact measures, amendments, and riders to expand private health plans and shrink the public option, create payment limitations or more restrictive reimbursement rules, and discourage public program enrollment. Currently, liberals in Congress, upset about existing levels of payments to private health plans in Medicare, which they deem excessive, are committed to rolling them back, hoping to halt the rapid growth of these increasingly popular Medicare Advantage health plan options.[30]

The more likely outcome of this political process is that the national health exchange would serve as an efficient mechanism to erode what is left of private health insurance. On the part of many in Congress, particularly those who favor a direct federal takeover of the entire system or the enactment of a single-payer health care system, the national health insurance exchange provides an arena for the destruction of the hated private health plans that, in their view, consume so many dollars in unwanted and unnecessary administrative costs and "immoral" profits.

There is good reason to believe that a public plan operating within a national health insurance exchange would accomplish the single-payer objective. In a December 2008 independent assessment of the likely impact of a public plan, the Lewin Group concluded that there would be major shifts from private to public coverage: Anywhere between 10.4 million and 118.5 million Americans, depending on how many are eligible for enrollment and the plan's payment rates, could be transitioned out of private health insurance.[31]

In its first analysis of the House Tri-Committee bill, Lewin estimated that, based on the statutory requirement for the use of Medicare rates as payment rates in the public plan, plus the progressive eligibility of all employees over time, the House bill would result in a dramatic expansion of government enrollment and that an estimated 113.5 million Americans would lose private coverage.[32] A recent Urban Institute study[33] and Lewin's most recent estimate of the latest version of the House bill show a smaller displacement of private coverage, but nonetheless a massive crowd-out.

During the markup of the Kennedy-Dodd bill, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), reported to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that, as a result of the provisions of the $1 trillion Senate bill, several million Americans would lose their employer-sponsored health insurance coverage.[34]

At the very least, the creation of a national health insurance exchange as a platform for a public plan to compete against private health insurance would cut short state innovation in health insurance market reform and accelerate the already rapidly growing federal domination of the financing and delivery of health care. Even more likely, it would ensure the eventual triumph of a single-payer system of national health insurance run by Washington. The national health insurance exchange combined with a public plan, falsely advertised as a mechanism to advance consumer choice and market competition, would be the institutional vehicle to guarantee the exact opposite.

Conclusion

President Obama and the congressional leadership are intent on creating a national health insurance exchange. In its various legislative forms, their version of the health insurance exchange is a powerful regulatory agency; it is not merely an administrative agency to facilitate enrollment and to promote choice and anything remotely approaching free-market competition.

In many respects, the national health insurance exchange resembles a solution in search of a problem. If the President or Congress wanted to create a national health insurance market, they would not need to create a national health insurance exchange--they would merely have to repeal existing federal barriers to insurers competing across state lines. If the President and Congress wanted to fix the inequities of the federal tax law, a key rationale for creating a health insurance exchange at the state level, all they would have to do is to reform the federal tax laws governing health insurance and end the practice of discriminating against those who cannot or do not get health insurance through their place of work.

If the objective of the President and Congress is to expand the role of the federal government in providing health insurance and determining the kind of health insurance that Americans will get, the national health insurance exchange is a convenient tool for that federal expansion and control. It would be tantamount to a national arena for the public plan to undercut private health plans and erode existing private health coverage.

There is little doubt that a national health insurance exchange, combined with a public plan, can achieve that policy objective. But there is also little doubt that such an objective is not what most Americans had in mind when they embraced the cause of comprehensive health reform.

Page 425 of Health Care BILL Page 425 of Health Care Bill - Listen to this interview Fred Thompson's Radio Show interviewing Betsy McCaughey (pronounced Mc Coy). Or look it up on www.fredthompsonshow.com<http://www.fredthompsonshow.com> , under interviews.0A On page 425 it says in black and white that EVERYONE on Social Security, (will include all Senior Citizens and SSI people) will go to MANDATORY counseling every 5 years to learn and to choose from ways to end your suffering (and your life). Health care will be denied based on age. 500 Billion will be cut from Seniors healthcare. The only way for that to happen is to drastically cut health care, the oldest and the sickest will be cut first. Paying for your own care will not be an option. ON PAGE 425 OF OBAMA’S HEALTH CARE BILL, the Federal Government will require EVERYONE who is on Social Security to undergo a counseling session every 5 years with the objective being that they will explain to them just how to end their own life earlier. Yes...They are going to push SUICIDE to cut medicare spending!"

Now, CALL YOUR PEOPLE IN WASHINGTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tell them to read page 425 if they don't read anything else. Surely some of them have parents. &nb sp;

The wannabe-socialists who pull the levers of the Democratic Party in America today have developed a narrative on the healthcare plan Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are currently trying to push through Congress. That narrative goes that virtually everyone is unhappy with their healthcare plan, is in favor of massive change to the healthcare system, favors Obama’s healthcare plan, and especially favors the so-called “public option.” They are currently busy trying to sell this narrative (which they have created out of whole cloth) to the Blue Dogs and other Democrats who are beginning to get worried about a backlash in 2010. The goal is to convince fence-sitting Democrats and Republicans that their fears of a backlash are totally unfounded and are just being artificially ginned up by the right-wing attack machine. (See, e.g., this hilarious piece at DailyKos for an example of liberals pushing this narrative. - Note by Jeff: as well as this takedown of that DK narrative)

The only problem with this narrative is that there is no aspect of it which is true. A FoxNews poll from June of this year showed that 89 per cent of Americans are happy with their own health care, and that even a majority of those without health insurance say that they receive health care and are happy with it. A Rasmussen poll released July 22nd revealed that Obama’s healthcare plan is opposed by 53% of Americans overall, including 60% of independents. Now comes the latest bit of bad news for Obama’s healthcare plan. A WSJ/NBC News poll taken July 24-27 indicates that the public is broadly dissatisfied with everything about the Obama/Pelosi plan, including the manner in which Obama is pushing it:

Forty-six percent of Americans disapprove of President Obama’s handling of the issue of health care reform compared to 41 percent who give him positive marks, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted July 24-27. Thirteen percent are undecided.

** snip **

Forty-two percent say the plan Obama is pushing is a bad idea, 36 percent say it is a good idea and 17 percent have no opinion. That compares to June when 32 percent said it was a bad idea, 33 percent labeled it a good idea and 30 percent had no opinion.

Thirty-nine percent believe that under Obama’s plan their health care will get worse, 29 percent say it will stay the same and 21 percent say it will get better. In April, 24 percent said it would get worse, 29 percent said it would stay the same and 22 percent said it would get better

What has to be troubling for Obama and Pelosi is not just the fact that the absolute numbers are bad, but also that each of the polls indicate that the trend in public opinion is moving away from support for Obama’s plan as the public learns more about it. Given what we learned today about the compromise negotiated with the Blue Dogs, it appears that these trends will have at least another two months to percolate, and for the fence-sitting Congressmen to hear from their constituents.

The other major problem is that there are only two people with the national stature and vested interest in seeing this bill passed through (whatever its political cost) are Obama and Pelosi. Pelosi remains vastly unpopular among the public at large, and sending her out to convince people in Arkansas that Mike Ross ought to vote for Obamacare would be an unmitigated disaster. Up until this point, Obamacare at least had Obama’s relative popularity in its back pocket, but now it appears that whatever people think of Obama himself, they are not buying what he is selling on his healthcare plan. And as the vote on the plan gets kicked down the road further and further, it becomes more certain that either the bill will die, or the political careers of those who vote for it will die while it lives.

The radically liberal administration of Barack Hussein Obama -- with the help of his partners-in-crime Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid -- is trying to FORCE Americans to accept socialized health care like Canada and Europe...

The Majority in Congress and the President are promising to change the "status quo" by pushing a government-run-medicine plan (HR 3200). The plan would create rationing through government committees, FORCE all Americans to buy over-priced, politically created health insurance, create an economically unsustainable government-run insurance plan, and impose economy-crushing taxes. In fact, the President would break yet another promise by imposing a 2.5% income tax on each person who refused to buy government improved insurance. Further, after 2013 people would be FORCED to stay in their current plan for LIFE or buy only a government-approved plan since no further enrollment will be allowed in non-approved insurance. Insurance companies would profit endlessly from the free business of the mandate. As medical care demands increased and artificially high profit margins became unacceptably low (for them) they would join the bailout game. In other words, there would be absolutely no change to the status quo — just an expansion of more people into the currently bad system with the added feature of state-sanctioned rationing of medical care.

More than 88 million Americans could LOSE their private, employer-based coverage, according to a new analysis of "The American Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009" released this week by The Heritage Foundation.

While Obama, Pelosi and Reid insist that "if you like your health insurance coverage, you'll get to keep it," it's now very clear: once again, THEY'RE LYING.

If the public plan is implemented as detailed in this bill, people with private insurance will be moved on a public plan, regardless of what they want, because their employers will make that decision because of the financial incentives in the bill.

That's not all: Yearly premiums for Americans with private coverage could jump as much as $460 per person as a result of more cost-shifting, which would stem from the public plan. Even doctors stand to lose thousands of dollars of income under the legislation. Annual physician net income is estimated to drop by 6.3 percent or $13.4 billion (coming in at an average $18,900 per physician) when compared with current trends.

Throughout the last presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly promised the American people: "If you're a family that's making $250,000 a year or less you will see no increase in your taxes. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your personal gains tax, not any of your taxes."

He lied. Just 15 days into office, President Obama signed a bill expanding the children's health insurance program that was paid for with a 156% tax hike on tobacco. Since slightly more than half of today's smokers (53%) earn less than $36,000 per year, Obama's first effort at expanding government's role in health care also became his first broken promise.

But that first Medicaid expansion was NOTHING compared to the estimated $1.3 trillion health care plan Congress is considering now. And how is Obama planning to pay for it? Tax hikes -- including employer health care mandates, which are really just a TAX on low-income workers, since employers will have to lower pay and cut jobs because of the tax penalties on them.

Is THIS "change we can believe in"??? NO -- and that means WE have to take action NOW!

Barack Obama is insisting that "we have to do something NOW" about our "health care crisis" in America, to "stem the rising costs of health care." But isn't that what he said about his so-called "stimulus" package -- the one that is now costing in the TRILLIONS of dollars, and isn't helping anything -- in fact, is making our economy WORSE?

FoxNews reported that the Congressional Budget Office has projected that the House legislation will cost $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, depending on the plan adopted. The price tag sent shock waves through Washington and beyond -- as it SHOULD.

But the CBO can only project out 10 years by law. Other projections based on CBO's numbers and extending into the future show the bill could EXPLODE the deficit once the benefits are fully implemented. One estimate by the Republican staff of the House Ways and Means Committee estimated the deficit would increase by $759 billion over the first 10 years the benefits are fully in effect, which is in 2015. Another projection of long-range costs done by congressional staff shows deficits in the 2020s of $50 billion to $250 billion per year.

On top of that, while Obama and his supporters claim the legislation will be "deficit neutral," one senior administration official acknowledged Tuesday that the pledge does not apply to an estimated $245 billion to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients over the next decade.

Obama and the liberal Democrats in Congress are trying to insist that their plans for the government to take over health care in America isn't "socialized medicine" -- but the fact is, socialized medicine exists to the extent that government controls medical resources and socializes the costs. And that's exactly what "Obamacare" will do!

Everyone, even leftists, admit that Obama's plan for "public option" health insurance is simply a giant step towards "single payer" health insurance -- which is short-hand for a health care system, like Canada's, where the government pays all the bills. As far back as 2003, Obama stated very plainly, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care plan."

Universal coverage is impossible without coercion; that's why the leading Democratic proposals would FORCE Americans to obtain health insurance, either on their own or through an employer. And what if you don't WANT to get the level of coverage that government officials mandate? You pay a fine. And what if you DON'T pay the fine? You go to jail.

There's absolutely ZERO evidence that anything beyond a basic health plan actually improves health outcomes, yet the individual and employer mandates that Obama and his cronies are trying to pass gradually make coverage less affordable by outlawing the leaner, less expensive plans. And you can be sure of this: if Congress enacts these mandates, we can say goodbye to health savings accounts as we know them.

And on top of all of this... the fact remains that we can't AFFORD this plan! In the face of an estimated $1.85 trillion federal budget deficit for FY2009 and projected trillion dollar annual deficits for the foreseeable future, how can anyone in Congress vote for this health care plan, which will cost at least $1 trillion over the next ten years? Plus, Congress is facing at least $53 trillion of unfunded liabilities due to its passage of the previous entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the recent addition of prescription drug coverage for Medicare. How can anyone in Congress vote for a new entitlement program for health care when Congress has not even begun to face up to this unfunded liabilities problem?

Well, they're trying to -- but WE can stop them, with YOUR help!

We CANNOT let the radical liberals in Congress -- and the White House -- force this plan for socialized health care on the American people! That's why we've set up our website to enable you to send a strong message to every single member of Congress, in both Houses, OPPOSING this outrageous plan.

For about what it would cost you in time and telephone charges, you can send Blast Faxes to Democrats, Republicans, Independents -- EVERYONE in the U.S. House AND the U.S. Senate, DEMANDING that they REJECT this socialized health care plan NOW!

Can it work? Can we stop Congress from forcing this down our throats, even though the GOP is in the minority?

YES -- thanks to "blue dog Democrats," who are more conservative than their "leaders" like Pelosi and Reid. Already, they've been holding up the bill in committee; now, they're saying that Pelosi might not have the votes she needs in the House! And on the Senate side, thanks to the overwhelming opposition of the American people to this bill, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, was overheard jokingly telling House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, "let me tell you, praying might be helpful here."

We CAN do this! In 1993, First Lady Hillary Clinton tried to force a less radical form of socialized health care down our throats, thinking that they could do it since the Democrats controlled Congress AND the White House.

What was the result? 1994, and the Republican Revolution. The liberal Democrats are "shooting themselves in the foot" again by trying to pass even more radical socialized health care this time -- but we CAN stop them!

P.S. America needs health care reform. But new government programs, mandates, and price controls would deny patients control over their most important and personal medical decisions -- and it's "reform" that we cannot afford.

THIS ATTEMPT BY LIBERALS IS OUTRAGEOUS -- and it MUST be stopped! Send your faxes right away to make sure these Senators get a STRONG message, to REJECT the socialized plan of "Obamacare" NOW -- Thank you!

"In the same way that the bill pushes elderly or the sick toward euthanasia, it is a pill that would cause economic suicide," said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel. "It's a euthanasia bill for America."

In the Liberty Counsel analysis, he notes that under Section 163, the government would be allowed to have real-time access to individuals' finances, including direct access to bank accounts for electronic funds transfers.

Under Section 1308, the analysis finds, the government will dictate marriage and family therapy as well as mental health services, including the definitions of those treatments.

Under Section 1401, a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research would be set up, creating a bureaucracy through which federal employees could determine whether any treatment is "comparatively effective" for any individual based on the cost, likely success and probably the years left in life.

It also, according to Staver, "covers abortions, transsexual surgeries, encourages counseling as to how many children you should have, whether you should increase the interval between children."

The plan would allow, in Section 1401, for the collection of information about individuals' health records, both "published and unpublished," and will recommend policies to allow for public access to data.

"It reflects a repressive regime worse than China's one-child policy," Staver told WND. "It's going down the road for a government that manages the most intimate matters of your life regarding health and safety."

Further, the plan is created to be the "only game in town," he said. And as people age or get sicker, it includes mandatory "consultations" to end your life, he said.

The Liberty Counsel staff that did the research was concerned about some of the issues, and dug into the details of the proposal.

"His choice of Harvard professor and self-styled 'neo-Malthusain' John Holdren as 'science czar' provides the latest and perhaps most trouble example of just how bad American really muffed it last November," he wrote.

"In the name of population control, Holdren has advocated both forced abortion and compulsory sterilization through government-administered tainting of the water supply. In a book he co-authored, entitled 'Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment,' Holdren calls for a 'Planetary Regime' to enforce mandatory abortions and limit the use of natural resources," he wrote.

Staver noted the dangers of such influences, such as Holdren's suggestion to implant sterility capsules in girls at puberty, extracting them only when they obtain government permission to have children. For men, the discussion has centered around additives to water to cause sterility.

Barber wrote that Holdren has affirmed he believes there is "ample authority" under the U.S. Constitution for population growth to be "regulated."

Nina May, founder of Renaissance Women, added to the arguments. She cited a 1948 Hitchcock movie about murder where the victim's body is hidden in plain sight.

"The health care bill that Obama proposes has this theme at its core and has in its crosshairs, the Baby Boomer engine that is pulling the derailed economy as it takes its final lap toward retirement. In less than two years, Baby Boomers will begin retiring in multitudes, expecting to reclaim the hard earned money they have been paying into Social Security. But this Health Care Bill, HR3200, has other plans for them," she wrote.

"Those 65 and older will be required to undergo mandatory 'end of life' counseling to determine if they are worthy to continue to not only live, but take much needed resources from those who are younger and more worthy to receive them. Counselors will be trained to discuss how to end life sooner, how to decline nutrition and hydration, how to go into hospice, etc.," she said.

"This will not be done without coercion. For those who have amassed assets enough to take care of themselves in their old age will have these assets confiscated in the name of fiscal responsibility, because by this time, every citizen will be entered into a national database under the guise of improved efficiency. This database will be run by a type of 'star chamber,' appointed by the president, that will determine whether or not you deserve the much needed operation your personal doctor thinks you need," she said.

The Liberty Counsel analysis also pointed out the government would be allowed to ration health care procedures, prevent "judicial review" of its decision, tell doctors what income they can have, impose new taxes for anyone not having an "acceptable" coverage, regulate whether seniors can have wheelchairs, penalize hospitals or doctors whose patients require "readmission," prevent the expansion of hospitals and set up procedures for home visits by health care analysts.

Under Section 440, Liberty Counsel said, the government "will design and implement Home Visitation Program for families with young kids and families that expect children." And Section 194 provides for a program that has the government "coming into your house and teaching/telling you how to parent," LC said.

"One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session," she said. "They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner."

The proposal specifically calls for the consultation to recommend "palliative care and hospice" for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions. Palliative care and hospice generally focus only on pain relief until death.

The measure requires "an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available."

Obama's anti-democratic policy

“FROM IRAN to Venezuela to Cuba, from Myanmar to North Korea to China, from Sudan to Afghanistan to Iraq to Russia to Syria to Saudi Arabia, the Obama administration has systematically taken human rights and democracy promotion off America's agenda. In their place, it has advocated ‘improving America's image,’ multilateralism and a moral relativism that either sees no distinction between dictators and their victims or deems the distinctions immaterial to the advancement of US interests.”

The President of Honduras violated a Supreme Court order against one of his moves against democracy. He replaced the Army chief as another. His Congress deposed him, but the U.S. has calls that a “coup.”

”While Obama's supporters champion his ‘realist’ policies as a welcome departure from the ‘cowboy diplomacy’ of the Bush years, the fact of the matter is that in country after country, Obama's supposedly pragmatic and non-ideological policy has either already failed - as it has in North Korea - or is in the process of failing. The only place where Obama may soon be able to point to a success is in his policy of coercing Israel to adopt his anti-Semitic demand to bar Jews from building homes in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.”

These policies are impractical. For example, the Arabs now believe they need not to move toward peace, because Obama will make Israel yield to them. [Their demands would render Israel vulnerable to conquest by them.]

“Why, with blood running through the streets of Iran, is he still interested in appeasing the mullahs? Why, with Venezuela threatening to invade Honduras for Zelaya, is he siding with Zelaya against Honduran democrats? Why, with the Palestinians refusing to accept the Jewish people's right to self-determination, is he seeking to expel some 500,000 Jews from their homes in the interest of appeasing the Palestinians? Why, with North Korea threatening to attack the US with ballistic missiles, is he refusing to order the USS John McCain to interdict the suspected North Korean missile ship it has been trailing for the past two weeks? Why, when the Sudanese government continues to sponsor the murder of Darfuris, is the administration claiming that the genocide in Darfur has ended?”

”The only reasonable answer to all of these questions is that far from being non-ideological, Obama's foreign policy is the most ideologically driven since Carter's tenure in office. If when Obama came into office there was a question about whether he was a foreign policy pragmatist or an ideologue, his behavior in his first six months in office has dispelled all doubt. Obama is moved by a radical, anti-American ideology that motivates him to dismiss the importance of democracy and side with anti-American dictators against US allies.”

”For his efforts, although he is causing the US to fail to secure its aims as he himself has defined them in arena after arena, he is successfully securing the support of the most radical, extreme leftist factions in American politics.” (http://www.imra.org.il/ -- Independent Media Research & Analysis, 6/30 from Caroline Glick.)

I agree, but am less puzzled about Obama. Remember his candidacy’s zig-zagging daily, not only on his policies but on what he had said? Remember his legislative record of voting “present,” so as to duck almost all controversial issues? He avoids unpopular stands on issues not central to his ideology. This may be clever but it also is cowardly and unethical. Also unethical is his posture, at odds with his policies.

I find that in some key ways, every President is worse than his predecessor. That is subjective -- current pain always seems more intense than past pain.

To further round out our view of Obama policy on democracy, click here:

The current crisis in Honduras has revealed the best and worst of our society. Let's begin with the latter. And I don't here refer to [ousted President] Manuel Zelaya, since history has already judged him and his henchmen who, in the name of the people, squandered the public coffers.

We have several villains who have tried to operate below the radar, which is why I cannot allow myself to let their movements and statements go unnoticed. Let's begin with the representatives of the U.S. government. Barack Obama, as well as Hillary Clinton and [U.S. Ambassador to Honduras] Hugo Llorens, have, as the gringos would say, "dropped the ball," or translated into Spanish, "put their foot in it [metido la pata]" in regard to their policy on the institutional crisis in Honduras. I can accept their questioning the way we removed Zelaya from Honduras (although, as we've stated in past articles, this was perhaps the only option we had to avoid a social and public security breakdown).

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

But I cannot abide how, ignoring our legal foundations, they have worked to isolate us within the international community. I consider abusive the efforts of Llorens, who, in clear violation of our Constitution and in complete disregard of our right to self-determination, proceeded to make appointments and visit various business groups in Honduras in order to threaten and get them to desist from their opposition to the return of Zelaya, insinuating all sorts of consequences. I was wrong about Llorens. When he first came to present his credentials and was humiliated by Zelaya, I thought he was a reasonable man. But now I find that his intentions don't have as a goal the overall interests of our people and relations between two countries which have distinguished themselves by being historically natural allies.

I think Llorens's diplomatic career will be very much affected by his clumsy handling of this crisis and his lack of forcefulness in curtailing Zelaya's malicious and continuing pretensions. Today he cut U.S. aid to our nation, but didn't have the “balls” to denounce the assault on our precarious finances by the previous administration [the Zelaya Administration].

Let us mention another villain in sheep's clothing: Nobel Peace Prize winner Óscar Arias. I'm highlighting his Nobel because it calls attention to his glaring deficiencies as a mediator of frank and constructive negotiations. Given the clear limitations of these negotiations, as clearly expressed in the obstinate language of his proposal, I searched the Internet (Wikipedia) for the criteria and merits that are evaluated in awarding the Nobel Peace Prize. According to my source, this is the most controversial of all the Nobel Prizes as it has been criticized for allowing very little time to pass before the events that prompted support for the nominated individual - and often show a clear political bias on the part of Nobel evaluation committee members. Because of this, winners don't necessarily have the support of history in terms of a demonstration that their actions have brought clear and lasting benefits to the cause of world peace. How could Arias, in his capacity as a mediator, placed on top of the agenda for his peace proposal, the restitution of Manuel Zelaya, if that is precisely the cause of the conflict? Moreover, how dare a Nobel Peace Prize laureate publicly insinuate a civil war?

Ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya in El Salvador,

after his plane was not permitted to land in Honduras.

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

I can't leave out of this lineup of villainy the leaders of the Teachers' Union, who, embracing a cause very much removed from that of education, have left schoolrooms to march in the streets, many wearing masks on their faces. This is exactly the attitude that has created the conditions that have led to today's social decay. It is time that teachers of true vocation take charge of our educational institutions to save the country.

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

I have left for the end a word about our brave compatriots. They are so numerous that I will certainly fail to mention them all. I'll also leave out, and not for lack of merit, the central figures in the change of government, since they've already been clearly identified. I prefer to focus on those modest and courageous members of the Micheletti Cabinet, whom I won't name so as not to leave anyone out. They have all taken on the patriotic responsibility of discharging their obligations, eliminating the abuses of the previous administration and undertaking their portfolios in the face of all kinds of deficiencies, particularly in regard to international assistance. Neither can I forget those teachers who have defied the threats of their leaders and taught their classes - often in the shade of a tree.

Did Obama do Zelaya’s bidding in revoking visas?

posted at 2:27 pm on July 29, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

Earlier today, Dafydd ab Hugh wrote about the weird juxtaposition of arguing for diplomatic contact with the Taliban while revoking visas for Honduran officials after the removal of Manuel Zelaya from office. The story actually gets even stranger, as The Hill reports. Apparently, the White House got the notion to revoke the visas from Zelaya himself, who demanded it in a letter to Barack Obama:

The ousted president of Honduras reportedly asked President Obama to revoke the diplomatic visas of members of interim President Roberto Micheletti’s de facto government.

Manuel Zelaya, who was removed from office on June 28 and has now retreated to the mountains of Nicaragua to organize a “resistance,” according to the Central American News Agency, reportedly sent a letter to Obama asking him to ramp up the pressure on the interim government and calling for the “revocation of visas” to those involved in his ouster, and the freezing of bank accounts.

The Zelaya letter reportedly names officials against whom the ousted president wanted action taken, including General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, the head of the armed forces who was fired by Zelaya on June 25 for refusing to use the military to press forward with a referendum deemed illegal by the country’s highest court. …

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed at Tuesday’s news briefing that four diplomatic visas had been revoked by the U.S. Kelly did not name names, but the deputy foreign minister of Honduras’s de facto government confirmed that one of the visas belonged to Judge Jose Tomas Arita Valle, the chairman of the 16-member supreme court who signed the ruling ordering the detention of President Manuel Zelaya.

Bear in mind that the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court removed Zelaya from office weeks ago. Suddenly the US has decided that it would be appropriate to impose travel sanctions on Honduran officials, although the State Department did its best to spin that idea into a maintenance of the status quo. They claimed that the timing “is what it is,” and denied that it represented a “turning of the screw,” despite the use of these exact same revocations as sanctions against other regimes. In fact, the US has demanded that UN nations revoke travel visas for a host of Iranian officials over the last several years.

Obviously, this does represent a “turning of the screw,” but Americans have a right to know who ordered it, and why. Is the hand on the screwdriver Barack Obama’s? Or is it the hand of a wanna-be tinpot dictator who tried to seize power illegally in Honduras, and wants the US to seize it for him now?

July 29 - On Tuesday, the State department announced that the Obama administration has revoked the diplomatic visas of 4 Honduran officials.

The reason, according to spokesman Ian Kelly, is that "we do not recognize the government of Roberto Micheletti."

This shows the stupidity of US foreign policy under this administration.

They do not recognize the government that is in charge, and has the support of the armed forces, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the majority of the Honduran people and even the Catholic Church, which normally remains neutral.

They recognize the non-government of a Chávez's puppet, who was trying to put in place an anti-American dictatorship like the ones in Venezuela and Nicaragua, and who has made a clown of himself by saying for four weeks that he is going back to Honduras, but still hasn't.

While the Obama administration keeps making concessions to the brutal regime in Cuba, they are trying to act tough against a weak country whose only crime is that their people refuse to lose their freedom.

Ramón Custodio, National Commissioner for Human Rights and one of those whose visa was revoked, told a Honduran newspaper that "Dignity is worth more than any visa."

"If for what I have to say they cancel my visa, if for what I have to say they do not invite me again to any of their parties, they can keep their caviars and rotten hams," Custodio told El Heraldo.

Custodio also told the paper that he will refuse any invitation to any embassy affair, if he would be forced to listen to mandates that no other country has the right to impose to the Honduran people.

"I will continue to defend the Constitution of Honduras and will oppose any attempt to deliver Honduras to Hugo Chávez."

After that, all I have to say is: Amen. Thank God for people like Ramón Custodio!

May: How to treat friends and foes

Historian Bernard Lewis has observed that a nation can make few mistakes worse than this: to be "harmless as an enemy, and treacherous as a friend." Is that a fair characterization of American foreign policy under the Obama administration?

Start with Honduras, which has been a stable and valuable ally for two decades. Recently, President Manuel Zelaya attempted to subvert his country's laws and democratic institutions in pursuit of the kind power enjoyed by such left-wing and anti-American strongmen as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Cuba's Raul Castro and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega.

Honduras' Supreme Court stood up to Zelaya -- eventually ordering the military to remove him from office. Honduras' Congress voted to install a new president, Roberto Micheletti, the next in line under Honduras' constitution, and a member of the same Liberal Party to which Zelayla belongs.

New elections, Micheletti said, should be held in November, as scheduled -- or sooner if that would ease tensions. As for the decision to expel Zelaya from the country, that must be understood, he explained, "in the context of genuine fear of Mr. Zelaya's proven willingness to violate the law and engage in mob-led violence."

Nevertheless, President Obama was quick to denounce Zelaya's ouster and -- echoing Chavez, Castro and Ortega -- demand that he be reinstated. Senior White House officials threatened sanctions if Honduras' legislature, courts and military refuse to do as told. More than $18 million in military and development assistance already has been suspended.

Contrast that with the White House response to the massive election fraud that recently took place in Iran: President Obama said he did not want to be seen as "meddling."

He eventually did express his preference for Iran's dissidents over those beating, arresting and killing them -- though many saw his support as a day late and a dollar short.

In recent days, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appears to have begun to restore a modicum of coherence to the administration's position on Honduras. She has criticized Zelaya -- who last weekend set up a "government in exile" in Nicaragua -- as "reckless," and she seems to be supporting attempts by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to mediate the conflict within the Honduran government.

These are not the only examples of what Mackubin Thomas Owens, editor of Orbis, the quarterly journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, calls Obama's "disturbing propensity to curry favor with our adversaries at the expense of our friends."

The Czechs and Poles are now "are rightly concerned that they will be sacrificed on the altar of better U.S. relations with Russia," Owens wrote. "And the Israelis fear that the Obama administration's desired opening to the Muslim world will be achieved at their expense."

In particular, Obama has been pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make unilateral concessions to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority.

The predictable result: Abbas has hardened his stance. One of his deputies, Kifah Radaydeh, said in a recent television interview: "(O)ur goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; and the goal is Palestine. I do not negotiate in order to achieve peace."

"Change" was one of Obama's campaign themes, so he was bound to try new foreign policy approaches. He may have been misinformed about who staged a coup against whom in Honduras. He may have believed that "outreach" would be sufficient to "re-set" relations with Russia, and that the prospect of "engagement" would induce Iran's rulers to give up their nuclear ambitions. He might have thought he could persuade Palestinians to meet Israelis half way. He may have figured that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il would rather feed his people than play with missiles, and that in a post-Bush era Hugo Chavez would be eager for rapprochement.

But in these and other cases, Obama's policies have collided with harsh realities. If Obama is as smart as advertised, he'll learn, and he'll adjust. If not, America's friends will grow colder while its enemies will grow bolder. And, over time, we will have fewer of the former and many more of the latter.

Most readers of this blog know that I personally believe Obama was born in Hawaii and can prove it any time he sees fit. I have always believed that the BC issue was a smokescreen to control awareness of the fact that Obama was a British/Kenyan citizen at the time of his birth through his father who was never a US citizen.

This fact alone – as the Supreme Court made reference to in the Minor case (see below) – raises doubts as to whether a native born US citizen with a dual foreign nationality at the time of his birth can be President. The BC birther conspiracy theory has clearly and effectively shielded from view the true issue – which is a legal question, not a conspiracy theory.

But with our Government trying to sanitize Obama’s eligibility today in Congress by attempting to pass H. RES. 593 , I’ve come up with a new mantra for the BC birthers:

WHERE DO WE PLACE THE PLAQUE?

H. Res 593 states:

Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii;

If they’re going to make that assertion so boldly and codify it in a Congressional Resolution then the American people, especially Hawaiian citizens, deserve to know exactly where in Hawaii Obama was born. Right?

This will be a source of State pride and also revenue for the municipality which can claim the exact spot where Obama was born.

H. Res 593 is intended to celebrate Hawaii’s entering the union. It makes great pomp out of its factual assertion that the 44th President of the US was born in Hawaii. So let’s not stop there. If the Congressional record will state Obama was born in Hawaii, it should also tell us where exactly in Hawaii he was born.

Honolulu is a city. But his birthplace is a spot, a certain address. That’s what we need. Because otherwise we can’t memorialize the spot. So here comes your mantra:

WHERE DO WE PLACE THE PLAQUE?

It doesn’t seem fair to the citizens of the municipality where Obama was born to deprive them of a plaque stating “this is where the 44th President was born.”

Most birth-sites of Presidents are given special distinction – some are protected and maintained by the National Park Service as National Historic Sites. For example, the place of birth for Teddy Roosevelt is a National Historic Site.

Why should Hawaii get the raw end of the stick?

Considering his historical run as the first African American President, doesn’t the place of Obama’s birth deserve to be declared a National Historic Site?

Of course, if Obama states unequivocally where he was born then historians will be able to thoroughly research that claim. And that’s all good because I’m sure Obama wants this cleared up. So let them make the Congressional resolution – just demand that the exact spot in Hawaii is made clear.

Was it a hospital? Was it in a house? If so, which house?

Is Congress really going to pass a resolution saying Obama was born in Hawaii without knowing where exactly in Hawaii he was born?

So listen up BC birthers, this is your new mantra:

WHERE DO WE PLACE THE PLAQUE COMMEMORATING OBAMA’S BIRTH?

It’s a respectful question. It’s not mean spirited. It doesn’t involve a conspiracy theory. And it will generate revenue and tourism for the people in the town where Obama was born. It will also provide something concrete for those concerned about his eligibility to properly research. Seems like a win win for everybody.

Just ask Obama to have a little love for the municipality where he was born by confirming once and for all his exact birthspot? What’s wrong with a little love, Pres?-------------------------------------

Obama Media Machine Rushing to Derail Treason Charges

The massive effort to force Barack Hussein Obama to become “transparent” about his birth place and circumstance, his college years and his passport records is gathering steam. Despite a million dollars in legal fees aimed at keeping Obama’s entire life history Top Secret, a relentless pursuit of the mystery messiah not only persists,—its going viral on the web and main stream in the press…

CNN news anchor Lou Dobbs put his career on the line by even mentioning the topic of Obama’s apparent constitutional ineligibility for the office of Commander-in-Chief. After almost two years of reports and law suits regarding Obama’s secret past, the pursuit of truth is finally reaching critical mass among American voters and the mainstream press is being forced to address the matter.

But don’t get too excited just yet… The Obama media machine is spinning around the clock to derail all efforts to smoke Obama out into the open, where he may soon have to answer the questions he has spent years and millions dodging. Is he a “natural born citizen” eligible to hold the office of president, or is he the greatest political fraud ever perpetrated on the American electorate?

A Charge of “Treason”

If Obama is what so many Americans assert, an unconstitutional fraud, then the appropriate charge for his actions, and the actions of those who have “aided and abetted” the fraud, would be no less than “treason.” A crime punishable by death… The implications are extraordinarily serious!

Leftist attacks on Fitzpatrick continued, intended to defame and derail the Commander’s claims, seem to have ignited a firestorm of reaction from other members of the US Military who share Commander Fitzpatrick’s concern for the US Constitution and a nation under siege by Obama’s Chicago Cabal. But Commander Fitzpatrick no longer stands alone…

Division in the Ranks

Since then, active duty and reserve unit soldiers have begun to challenge Obama’s constitutional authority to issue military orders as Commander-in-Chief.

On June 25th I released ”What Difference Can One TRUE Patriot Make?” discussing the growing number of American patriots who are joining the chorus of dissenting soldiers increasingly concerned with the potential consequences of an unconstitutional Commander-in-Chief who continues to refuse to prove his legitimacy for the highest office in our land.

An increasing number of soldiers are refusing Obama orders for recall and deployment. Obama is indeed losing control of the US Military. Above all other Americans, the men and women who volunteer and proudly take an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution by serving in the US Military, have a right to know without any doubt, that their orders are legal and constitutional.

But the Obama administration sees no need to become the “transparent” president he promised to be during his campaign, and they remain steadfast in their efforts to keep Obama’s life Top Secret.

Meanwhile, the heated divisions bubbling up within the ranks became so vicious on a Military.com discussion board last week, that the publication removed all reference to the matter from their web site before America’s fighting men and women came to blows.

Flight Surgeon, Lt. Col. Dr. David Earl-Graeff felt the need to send a letter to Sec. of Defense Gates on the matter, stating the following‚…

“Enough is enough! You must be aware at this point of the tempest brewing among the Rank and File. I am writing you in an effort to appeal to your sense of concern for the Military; a concern we share not only for the Military as a whole but for each and every individual who wears the Uniform in the Service of our Country. I am in this regard specifically asking you for your help. I implore you to not wait until the “pot boils over” and we find ourselves in total disarray.”

Grand Jury Indictments

Rise up for America has convened citizen grand juries across the country, presented evidence of Obama “treason” to the jurors and issued grand jury indictments against Barack Hussein Obama in multiple jurisdictions.

Tenth and Second Amendment Legislation

The Tenth Amendment Center is leading state legislators across the country to restate their sovereign state rights and erect legislative walls of defense at state borders, to protect their citizens against a runaway Fed hell-bent upon bankrupting the nation.

Obama Digs in for Long Winter

But as Obama’s approval ratings plummet and the multiple initiatives to reign in the Fed and reinstate the US Constitution grow, Obama and Co. dig in for a long cold winter.

The Obama Media Machine is working around the clock to run interference on the issue of eligibility, proclaiming the entire subject a “dead issue” without ever investigating the charges or the absent records behind them.

Obama forces are trying to shut up Lou Dobbs and get him fired for even bringing up the subject, even though Dobbs is a sucker for the parade of leftist Obama birth cert excuses. The Los Angeles Times is stating that “the Obama birther story is dead,” following the lead of CNN President Jon Klein, who told staffers at the cable news network that “the supposed controversy regarding the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate is a dead story.”

Klein then sent an e-mail to staffers of “Lou Dobbs Tonight” just as the program went to air, informing them that CNN researchers had determined that “Hawaiian officials discarded all paper documents in 2001.” - “A long-form birth certificate with details about the doctor who delivered Obama no longer exists,” they reported. “The shorter Certificate of Live Birth noting Obama’s birth on Aug. 4, 1961, that has been made public is the official record.”

[Obama has offered three different COLB’s as his proof, and named two different hospitals as his place of birth, neither of which will confirm that he or his mother ever entered the doors of their facility.]

The Absolute Inescapable TRUTH

But the American press wants it all to be a “dead issue.”

That’s because contrary to US media propaganda on the matter, the real truth actually does exist and it most likely exists in Obama’s official birth, adoption, college and passport records, all of which remain under lock and key, under Obama’s orders.

The truth is inescapable… Nobody works this hard to hide the simple truth kept in his personal records, unless that truth in some way threatens his current standing.

The 25-28% of American voters, including most members of the US press who desire a “New Amerika” run on the principles of Karl Marx instead of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, couldn’t care less whether or not Obama meets Constitutional standards because they couldn’t care less what the Constitution says about anything.

But the people who took an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, have a very different view of the subject. Sooner or later, one way or another, the nation and the world is going to know the truth about the mystery messiah.

The longer it takes to smoke Obama and his cohorts out of their secretive moonbat cave, the more expensive the fraud and the solution.

Obama Can End the Debate Anytime He Wants

As the truth is simple and easy to prove one way or another, and Obama holds the key to his locked-up history, he alone can end all debate on the matter anytime he chooses by simply becoming the “transparent” resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. that he promised to be.

I had hoped that he would be the “transparent” president he promised to be. I still hope he will make his life “transparent” before this story spins completely out of control. But, I don’t look for him to do this anytime soon, or even until he has run out of room to run, places to hide, and minions to carry his water in the press.

You see, people don’t hide or run from the truth unless the truth presents a threat of some sort. Whatever it is in Obama’s files, it’s clear that it presents a threat greater than all of the damage being done by the secret.

For trust to exist in any relationship, secrets cannot exist. And in this case, secrets of this magnitude with implications so far reaching, the secret itself threatens the stability of the entire federal government and its command of men and women who have taken an oath to protect and preserve the US Constitution and the free republic.

The issue of Obama eligibility is NOT going away; it is coming to a head. I sincerely hope that Obama will become the president he promised to be, before this powder keg blows…

When a news reporter from Australia is forced to write the following sentence, the US press should be too ashamed to even respond… They should just correct the problem!

“I seriously long for the good old days, when if a reporter or CNN President said something, there was a better than 50% chance it was true.¬† Unfortunately, regarding the “birth certificate issue” most reporters today are intentionally misstating the facts.”

JB Williams is a business man, a husband, a father, and a writer. A no nonsense commentator on American politics, American history, and American philosophy. He is published nationwide and in many countries around the world. JB Williams’ website is jb-williams.com/

There are 23 birth announcements in the supposed newspaper birth announcement of Barack Obama's birth. Each lists a parent. I could only confirm that six of these parents really lived in Hawaii around that time.

Using this people search I compared their known addresses from the US Social Security Index with the addresses listed on the newspaper clipping:

While few names from the newspaper clipping showed up in a genealogical search, it should be noted that each address showed up perfectly on google maps. The only discrepancy there: the newspaper lists a "Kaululaau Highway" which doesn't exist; it's "Kaululaau Street."

This is by no means a smoking gun. Maybe these people all happened to have previous addresses and they got lost. But it's very suspicous.

The Alex Jones Show is a nationally syndicated news/talk show based out of Austin, TX. The show is syndicated by the Genesis Communication Network on over 60 AM and FM radio stations across the United States, as well as having a large internet based audience.

If you've never heard of Alex Jones, then you've been missing out on some of the most dynamic, hard-hitting radio on the planet.

Syndicated radio journalist and documentary filmmaker Alex Jones has been on the front lines of the growing global information war from ground zero to the occult playgrounds of the power-mad elite........

Dr. Michael Savage interviewed Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily on the July 24th broadcast of "The Savage Nation". It appears that search engines, including Google, Yahoo and Bing are collaborating with the Obama administration to censor posts about the Obama Birth Certificate/Citizenship issue.

Farah tells Michael Savage that within a period of 24 hours, all of WorldNetDaily's stories about the Birth Certificate/Citizenship issue been buried deep in the search results of all three search engines.

The stunning collapse in public opinion for President Obama's health care plan demonstrates a weakness in the president's overall vision. According to a new Gallup Poll, 55 percent of Americans now believe Obama is doing a poor job on health care reform, his signature issue. The main reason for this is that few understand what the deuce is going on. I analyze the news for a living, and I can't explain what the House bill would do. It's more than a thousand pages long, for crying out loud, and reading it could cause your head to explode.

Americans elected Obama to change things that are failing. No question but that the health industry is in chaos. Price gouging, frivolous lawsuits and poorly run hospitals all add to the apprehension of the regular folks. But the president is not reforming, he's reinventing. He wants the government to set up a parallel health care apparatus, a giant entanglement of entitlements.

Did I mention that no one can explain it?

It's not only confusion that is causing Americans to bail on Obamacare. Most of us value freedom and have a healthy distrust of government. Time after time, we have seen the feds screw things up: Iraq, Katrina, immigration, Vietnam, the war on drugs, public schools, the list is endless. And we are going to put our troubled appendix in the hands of these people?

If the president's plan were clearly presented with the costs spelled out, I believe it would have a chance of passing. But just about everybody knows the USA might be facing bankruptcy, which would damage Americans far more than a troubled health care system. Even though he will not admit it, there is huge financial risk in Obama's health care vision, and Americans are starting to wise up about the danger.

Finally, there is the freedom factor. Your health is obviously personal. You want to have as much control as possible when you get sick. In Canada, where the government runs the health care industry, there are waiting lists for treatment in some places and a shortage of doctors in others. Americans fear that if medical choices are dictated by the feds, that kind of chaos will happen here.

Also, federal health care means all of your medical records are in the hands of the government. Do you want that?

Don't be surprised if the federal health care plan goes down in flames and Obama is dealt his first major setback. This whole thing is poorly thought out, rushed and full of peril.

The Chavez-Obama U.N. plot against Honduras

The United Nations on Thursday begins a debate over a new U.N. military doctrine called the “Responsibility to Protect,” which would authorize the world organization to be used as cover to intervene in the sovereign affairs of a nation state, supposedly to protect the people of a country against their own government. The first target could be anti-communist Honduras.

The “Responsibility to Protect,” also known as RtoP or R2P, is mostly the work of the World Federalist Movement, a group dedicated to world government by strengthening the United Nations system. It is the major force behind the “International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect.”

R2P was sold as something to be exercised against regimes practicing genocide against their own people. But the new doctrine is so vague and subject to political manipulation that one can speculate it could be used to justify some form of U.N. intervention in Honduras on the pretext that the people there are somehow being victimized by a popular military-backed regime. In fact, some Hondurans are telling this columnist that they are fearful that U.N. “blue helmets” are right now being prepared to invade their country.

It is difficult to dismiss these concerns as baseless rumors, considering what will be happening at the U.N. The key U.N. official orchestrating the debate, General Assembly President and Lenin Peace Prize recipient Miguel D’Escoto, is the same figure who recently managed passage of a U.N. resolution supporting the return to Honduras of Manuel Zelaya, who was removed by the military on the orders of the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress. Zelaya is a lackey of Venezuelan communist ruler Hugo Chavez, who is using his oil money to buy and influence governments throughout Latin America.

In an ominous development, blogger Jason Poblete, an astute observer of Latin American affairs with excellent sources, reports that “The Obama Administration is considering a United Nations Security Council Resolution against the constitutional government of Honduras.” If true, anticipated U.N. sanctions against Honduras could be followed by the world organization being used as cover for outside forces to invade Honduras and reinstate Zelaya.

The new government in Honduras replaced Zalaya because he was trying to set himself up as president-for-life, Chavez-style. All of this was found to be in violation of Honduran law and the Constitution. Despite what officials of the Obama Administration said in trying to orchestrate media coverage of this crisis, it was not a military coup in any sense. The military doesn’t run Honduras today. In fact, the new president, appointed by Congress, is from Zelaya’s own political party. Zelaya was dismissed because of the simple fact that he tried to violate the law and the Constitution.

Zelaya flew from Costa Rica, where he was deported, to U.N. headquarters in New York, where D’Escoto, who is also a Communist Catholic Priest from Nicaragua, greeted him as a comrade. Since the crisis began and the U.N. voted to have him reinstated, the Obama Administration has been trying to figure out a way to get him back into power. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias recently hosted some negotiations to try to resolve the dispute but they appear to be going nowhere.

The U.N. may be the logical next step, if Zelaya’s allies in the region don’t act precipitously on their own and intervene. Chavez has already threatened to invade Honduras to put Zelaya back in power.

Interestingly, according to one report, when Zelaya tried to return to Honduras by plane and was turned away, his supporters began chanting “We want blue helmets!”-a reference to U.N. peacekeepers. This could be the scenario we see developing, using the “Responsibility to Protect” or something similar as justification for U.N. economic and military intervention.

R2P is usually offered as a possible remedy in the case of Darfur, a region of Sudan where people are being massacred by the Islamic regime. But this was never realistic. President Obama promised but has failed to do anything about this. The real source of the problem in Darfur is the communist regime in China, which directly finances the Sudanese regime through oil purchases. Obama won’t confront China because he needs Chinese help to finance his tax, spend and debt policies.

With Arab and Muslim governments also unwilling to confront the problem directly, the burden of responding to Darfur falls on the incompetent and corrupt U.N., which is always anxious to expand its scope and power. The “Responsibility to Protect,” which was actually approved by the U.N. General Assembly in 2005, when the Bush Administration was in power, is supposed to be the answer. The debate unfolding in the U.N. is over how to implement this doctrine and under what circumstances. What can be certainly be expected are calls for more money for the U.N. to finance more military power, perhaps even a standing World Army that includes more U.N. “blue helmet” peacekeepers.

Everybody knows, of course, that the doctrine will not be used against China, a member of the U.N. Security Council. Nobody expects a U.N. force to liberate Tibet. Neither will a U.N. force be deployed to protect Georgia from Russia. Instead, it will be used against small countries, possibly Honduras, where there is a U.N. “consensus” and the Obama Administration could vote and work with China and Russia.

D’Escoto, or as he is called, “Father D’Escoto,” will preside over the U.N. debate, which is expected to run into Friday. Pope Benedict XVI endorsed the “Responsibility to Protect” in an April 2008 speech before the U.N. but has been unclear about how it should be implemented. He has called for dialogue in Honduras.

On the ground in Honduras, an overwhelmingly Catholic Central American country, the Catholic Church has backed the ouster of Zelaya because of the realistic fear that he was a front man for Chavez. In a statement, the Catholic bishops of Honduras declared that Zelaya had been removed from office on the basis of a valid court order.

But not all of the Catholic elements in the country are opposing Zalaya’s return. The Jesuit-run Radio Progreso has been acting as a mouthpiece for Zalaya and his supporters and is the source of the recent report that Zelaya intends to invade the country in cahoots with something called the Peaceful Resistance Front. The Catholic Church in Honduras fears that Zelaya could spark a bloodbath. Such a spectacle could provide the cover for U.N. intervention.

With Obama’s plans to seize the health care and energy sectors a focus of public attention, few in Congress are taking a hard look at the prospect of violence in Honduras. However, Senator Jim DeMint and several other senators have protested the Obama policy. DeMint also introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill to require the Director of National Intelligence to present a “full report” on the roles played by Chavez and the leaders of Nicaragua and Cuba in facilitating the crisis in Honduras.

What is also needed is for the Congress-and the media-to start investigating the Obama Administration’s role in all of this. On July 13, the State Department spokesman confirmed that Chavez had called Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon to “discuss the current situation in Honduras and the ongoing negotiations mediated by Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias.” The confirmation followed news of Chavez boasting about the telephone call on Venezuelan state TV.

This tends to confirm what former Marxist SDS radical Tom Hayden, leader of “Progressives for Obama,” has written about the Obama-Chavez relationship. Based on his own inside sources of information, Hayden said that he thinks Obama and Chavez are working together on Honduras and have an “understanding,” which he even describes as “collaboration.” The call Chavez made to Shannon suggests that Chavez is calling the shots.

Ultimately, according to a very detailed report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, this would benefit Iran, a terrorist state developing nuclear weapons which is developing a vast network throughout Latin America. A recent report from the organization examines the deep Iranian connections to Venezuela as well as Bolivia.

If the Obama Administration is, in effect, acting as an agent of Venezuela (and Iran) in Honduras, such a foreign policy could be described not only as anti-American but potentially treasonous, considering that the outcome could be the loss of another country in Latin America to the Chavez brand of communism.

It is time for some investigative reporting into the nature of the Chavez-Obama axis.

The United Nations on July 23, begins a debate over a new U.N. military doctrine called the “Responsibility to Protect,” which would authorize the world organization to be used as cover to intervene in the sovereign affairs of a nation state, supposedly to protect the people of a country against their own government. The first target could be anti-communist Honduras

The “Responsibility to Protect,” also known as RtoP or R2P, is supported by the World Federalist Movement, a group dedicated to world government by strengthening the United Nations system. It is the major force behind the “International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect.”

R2P was sold as something to be exercised against regimes practicing genocide against their own people. But the new doctrine is so vague and subject to political manipulation that one can speculate it could be used to justify some form of U.N. intervention in Honduras on the pretext that the people there are somehow being victimized by a popular military-backed regime. In fact, some Hondurans are telling this columnist that they are fearful that U.N. “blue helmets” are right now being prepared to invade their country.

Thousands of Hondurans have a message for the World: WE DONT WANT MEL!

July 22 - Thousands of Hondurans marched today to express their support for their government and to reject the interference of Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro and Barack Obama, who want want to force the return of Mel Zelaya as president against the wishes of the majority of the Honduran people.

"Mel Traitor" and "OAS respect our Constitution," were some of the signs carried by the pro Micheletti marchers.

-------------------------------------

Supporter of Honduras ' ousted president Manuel Zelaya throw rocks toward supporters of Honduras' interim President Roberto Micheletti in Tegucigalpa July 22, 2009. Honduras' de facto government said on Wednesday talks to end a political crisis following last month's coup have been delayed and it is awaiting new proposals from the mediator.

REUTERS/Edgard Garrido (HONDURAS POLITICS CONFLICT)

ZELAYA'S SUPPORTERS PROTEST IN FRONT OF AMERICAN EMBASSY ON 7/22/2009, THEY DO NOT READ OR ARE NOT AWARE THAT OBAMA'S ADMINISTRATION SIDED WITH ZELAYA.

A supporter of ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya, wearing a costume, protests outside the US embassy in Tegucigalpa, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. U.S. officials are considering sanctions on Honduras if mediation efforts by Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias fail to resolve the crisis.

(AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

------------------------------------------------

Supporters of ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya, * wearing costumes, protest outside the US embassy in Tegucigalpa, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. U.S. officials are considering sanctions on Honduras if mediation efforts by Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias fail to resolve the crisis.

-------------------------------

*NOTE: THE COSTUME WEARING IS OF A CARDENAL OF CATHOLIC CHURCH.

---------------------------

(AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

A supporter of ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya shout slogans outside the US embassy in Tegucigalpa, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. U.S. officials are considering sanctions on Honduras if mediation efforts by Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias fail to resolve the crisis.

Originally published 04:45 a.m., July 22, 2009, updated 01:50 p.m., July 22, 2009

EXCLUSIVE: Ousted Honduran leader accused of theft

Honduran officials are investigating allegations that President Manuel Zelaya and his chief of staff stole millions of dollars from the central bank before the military ousted Mr. Zelaya last month, according to a senior Honduran official, government documents and other evidence.

A security video from the Central Bank of Honduras made available to The Washington Times shows officials entering the bank June 24 and withdrawing large amounts of Honduran currency. The money was driven to the office of Mr. Zelaya's chief of staff, Enrique Flores Lanza, according to depositions by three witnesses to Honduran prosecutors.

Government documents and testimony by the three say that about $2.2 million was taken.

The video, originally aired in Honduras, has not been previously reported by U.S. media.

An additional $550,000 was withdrawn hours later from the central bank by order of Mr. Lanza, according to bank documents obtained by The Times.

Two Honduran political opponents of Mr. Zelaya with knowledge of the transactions said Mr. Zelaya planned to use the money in connection with a referendum that if successful would have permitted him to serve a second term as president. The Honduran Supreme Court and Congress ruled the referendum illegal because the constitution limits presidents to a single term.

The military removed Mr. Zelaya and flew him to Costa Rica on June 28. Roberto Micheletti became interim president.

The two Zelaya opponents, who include a senior Honduran official, spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because of concerns for their safety amid a fluid situation in their country.

Attempts to reach Mr. Zelaya and Mr. Lanza were not successful.

In Washington, Mr. Zelaya and his ousted government continue to be represented by the Honduran Embassy, where Juan Carlos Montoya is acting as a spokesman on behalf of the deposed president.

"There are no checks and balances," Mr. Montoya said. Leaders of the interim government "control the media and own the three branches of the state. The day of the coup d'etat, they sent Mr. Zelaya away instead of holding him for a trial. Nothing that comes out of the de facto government has credibility."

Mr. Montoya also charged that the interim administration "has entered into people homes without warrants and seized bank accounts because they don't support [the interim government]. They can say whatever they want about that video, and they could easily be manipulating it for their own gain."

The coup has been denounced by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Obama administration and especially the governments of Venezuela and Cuba, which had backed the populist Honduran president.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has been trying to mediate between Mr. Zelaya and Mr. Micheletti. The Arias plan would allow Mr. Zelaya to serve out the final months of his term, hold elections in October, provide amnesty to political opponents and include their representatives in a reconciliation government.

Several Honduran officials, analysts and Honduran citizens close to the investigation of the missing money vouched for the validity of the documents obtained by The Times. However, the investigation was initiated under the interim regime, which bitterly opposes Mr. Zelaya.

Michael Shifter, a Latin America specialist at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, said "mud is going back and forth" on both sides.

"Some of these allegations may be true, and some may not be," Mr. Shifter said. "I don't think anybody has any illusions that the Zelaya government was made up of saints."

Mr. Shifter said the future of Honduras is "anyone's guess" and a resolution would require a clear guarantee by the U.S. and the international community that if Mr. Zelaya returns to Honduras "he would be reined in and not do the same power grab he did that provoked the coup."

However, Mr. Shifter said, there are no guarantees at this time.

The Honduran citizen who vouched for the allegations against Mr. Zelaya said "the order to withdraw the money was given by Mr. Lanza through Mr. Zelaya."

"It was withdrawn in cash, and that is not a usual transaction for the amount of that caliber, which is mainly issued in check form. The attorney general's office has been given a court order to proceed for the arrest of Lanza."

Fred Lash, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said the charges against Mr. Lanza and Mr. Zelaya are "an internal matter that can only be handled by the Honduran government."

Three witnesses have come forward to give depositions against Mr. Lanza and Mr. Zelaya. They told prosecutors that Mr. Lanza requested $2.7 million above an approved budget of $10.5 million.

"The national prosecutor's office based on the investigations and the testimonies rendered by witness A established that on Tuesday, June 23, the minister of the presidency summoned by Mr. Enrique Flores Lanzaon orders of the president that they had increased the budget from 190 million to 230 million [lempiras] and the same minister called later to say that the boss [ Mr. Zelaya] to please help them by withdrawing 40 million lempiras to help the Ministry of the Presidency," said the Honduran document, which was in Spanish.

According to the documents, Mr. Lanza demanded that the funds be in cash. The three witnesses, referred to in the documents only as "A," "B" and "C," told prosecutors that the cash was taken to the office of Mr. Lanza and has not been returned.

Jaime Daremblum, who served as ambassador to Costa Rica from 1998 to 2004 and is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said the charges are credible.

"It's really remarkable how corruption has become a trademark for the Chavez model in Latin America," Mr. Daremblum said, referring to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "You find corruption in Venezuela, Nicaragua and obviously it has been found in Honduras. It's big-time corruption. I feel that the country is highly polarized now, and both parties have established positions that are very difficult to reconcile at this stage of mediation."

Mr. Daremblum said the worst outcome for Honduras "is that it takes time to arrive at an agreement for both parties" and that "Mr. Zelaya has had an increasingly belligerent tone cheered on by Chavez and Fidel Castro. Now he's threatening to go back to Honduras next Friday and set up base camp to cause an insurrection."

Mr. Zelaya has said repeatedly that he would return to Honduras even if mediation fails.

Mr. Michelleti said Mr. Zelaya would be arrested if he returns. Military officials used vehicles to block a runway July 5, when Mr. Zelaya last attempted to return to Honduras. One Honduran was killed in clashes at the airport.

-------------------------A security video from the Central Bank of Honduras

The crisis in Honduras moves into its third week. Talks scheduled today for Costa Rica between the government of Roberto Micheletti and representatives of deposed president Manuel Zelaya appear to have broken down.

The sticking point remains the demand for the return of Zelaya to presidential office. While the mediator President Oscar Arias, the U.S., Venezuela’s populist authoritarian president Hugo Chavez, and even Raul Castro demand it, the Micheletti government remains adamant in defense of the constitutionality of its actions, while the Supreme Court balks at amnesty for Zelaya’s crimes.

New evidence reported in the Washington Times states Zelaya’s closest aide made multi-million dollar cash withdrawals from the central bank shortly before June 28. The money was reportedly to be used to support the unauthorized and unauthorized referendum vote that was the cause of Zelaya’s removal from office.

Zelaya vows to return to Honduras in the next few days increasing the chances of bloodshed and political instability. Zelaya’s return will breed the politics of polarization, Marxian class struggle, and the radical brew of leftist/revolutionary doctrine and practice that accompanies the advance of Hugo Chavez and his militants in Latin America.

It remains a sad irony that the Obama Administration’s toughest diplomatic efforts to implement sanctions and exert direct pressure in the name of “democracy” in its first six months in office are being directed – not against Iran, North Korea, Burma, Cuba, or Zimbabwe – but toward Honduras, a poor, friendly, vulnerable nation in Central America.

Ortega has been emboldened by the Obama Administration’s demand that neighboring Honduras permit the return of its corrupt, bullying ex-president Mel Zelaya, who was removed for similarly seeking to perpetuate his rule.

Honduras’s Zelaya was lawfully removed from office by soldiers acting on orders of his country’s Supreme Court (and replaced by the speaker of Honduras’s Congress) after he, too, sought to rewrite his country’s constitution to allow him to seek another term in office. (Honduras has had such a problem over the years of corrupt presidents using patronage, fraud, and intimidation to get reelected over and over again that Article 239 of its current Constitution immediately strips presidents of their office they even propose ending term limits, and Article 272 of its Constitution authorizes the military to remove presidents who seek to evade term limits).

For Honduras to allow the return of Zelaya would violate Article 239 of its Constitution, which bans would-be term limit violators from holding office, but it may allow his return anyway if his power is reduced, since the Obama Administration is blackmailing Honduras with threats of trade sanctions (America buys most of Honduras’s exports) and aid cut-offs (Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, and its budget is heavily dependent on foreign aid). Never mind that Honduras’s Congress, Supreme Court, church leaders, and other institutions overwhelmingly don’t want him back.

Even liberal legal scholars admit that Zelaya’s removal from office was technically legal, although, strangely, they don’t like it for ideological reasons (they root for Zelaya because he made socialist speeches and allied himself with Venezuela’s socialist ruler Hugo Chavez; they ignore the fact that Zelaya, a wealthy landowner, looted his country’s treasury and gave millions to his wealthy landowner cronies). But amazingly enough, they are now demonizing GOP Senators as ignorant hicks for citing the same facts about Honduran law that they did.

The liberal Daily Kos diarist Litho was one of the first people to note that the Honduran military’s removal of Zelaya from office was “legal” in a “technical sense” under Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution. But when 17 U.S. Senators later noted that the removal was seemingly legal (and asked the Obama Administration to stop trying to force Honduras to reinstate its constitution-shredding ex-president), Litho attacked this argument as being “evidence-free.” Apparently, a straightforward description of the law suddenly becomes reactionary nonsense the moment a GOP senator agrees with it. (Many others have explained why the removal was legal, including the prominent Honduran-American appellate lawyer Miguel Estrada, Honduran lawyer Octavio Paz, former assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, and me).

Litho now deceptively claims that the removal is now illegal even according to the Honduran military and Supreme Court. But as the stories Litho links to make clear (and Litho knows perfectly well), the military and Supreme Court were saying that the EXILE of Zelaya was illegal, not that his removal from OFFICE was illegal. (Zelaya’s removal from office was perfectly legal, but his subsequent exile may well have been illegal under Article 81 of the Honduras Constitution, much as President Lincoln’s exiling of the pro-slavery Congressman Clem Vallandigham during the Civil War was technically illegal). In short, as Miguel Estrada notes, while Zelaya may have an “immigration beef” with his country, he has no right to resume being president, and Obama has no right to force his return to office.

The real basis of Litho’s — and Obama’s — desire to reinstate Zelaya is the belief that Honduras’s Constitution is an outdated “artifact” and thus simply should not be followed when it conflicts with the latest ideological fads. Much as some liberal legal scholars argue that certain constitutional provisions should be ignored because they were drafted by dead white males, Litho argues that even though the Honduran “Congress, the courts, and the Armed Forces behaved in ways that are in fact constitutional,” the “Honduran constitution” should be ignored because it conflicts with “the norms of the international community.” The irony is that the same arguments could be made against the U.S. Constitution, which is almost 200 years older than the 1982 Honduran Constitution. The U.S. Constitution contains many provisions that are historical “artifacts,” such as its electoral college system for selecting presidents, which conflicts with the international norm of selecting political leaders purely by popular vote. Much of Britain’s system of government was fashioned by a Parliament that was once elected by a tiny percentage of its population (only wealthy male landowners and merchants could vote).

To justify meddling in Honduras, the Obama Administration has made radical arguments at odds with our own constitution, like claiming that elected presidents have a “universal right” to keep ruling even if they violate the Constitution (explain that to Richard Nixon), and that government officials have a right to extensive “judicial process” before removal (explain that to the many elected officials who can be recalled from office at any time, like California’s governor, or who can be impeached by Congress without judicial intervention, like the President).

At the same time, Obama has deliberately ignored violations of democracy and constitutional rights by left-wing dictators in Latin America, leading even the liberal Washington Post, which has not endorsed a Republican for president since 1952, to accuse Obama of showing a “willful disregard of political oppression” by left-wing dictators.

In response to Obama’s pressure on Honduras to put Zelaya back in power, Senator Jim DeMint has placed a temporary hold on the nomination of Arturo Valenzuela to be Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs. Valenzuela has a soft-spot for Anti-American dictators, reflecting his reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press.

The wire services like CNN and Reuters (whose reporters have long romanticized left-wing dictators overseas) continually refer to Honduras’s removal of its president as a “coup,” even while noting that his removal was ordered by the country’s supreme court. But if it was constitutional, it was by definition not a coup. As Wikipedia notes, “A coup d’état . . . or coup for short, is the sudden, unconstitutional deposition of a legitimate government, by a small group of the State Establishment — usually the military — to replace the deposed government with another, either civil or military.”

The fact that soldiers removed him on orders from the supreme court does not make it a “coup” anymore that the English Parliament’s use of soldiers to replace and exile King James II made that a coup. The use of soldiers to enforce court orders is not unknown even in the U.S., where troops were used to enforce a court’s desegregation order in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, against the state’s governor. In Honduras, troops perform many functions performed by civil police in the U.S., like safeguarding ballot boxes. And Honduras does not the kind of court police who might carry out court orders in the U.S., like U.S. Marshalls. (Even in the U.S., if a president were impeached and refused to leave office, the military would probably be needed to dislodge him. The only way to remove a would-be dictator is through military force. The more powerful the official, the more powerful the force needed to remove him, and it is absurd to expect a president’s removal to be enforced by a couple of pot-bellied U.S. marshalls).

Obama is repeating the foreign policy mistakes of the Carter Administration, which likewise meddled in the internal affairs of foreign countries to promote left-wing dictators and strongmen, like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Mugabe is blocking international assistance to his malnourished subjects, who are dying in droves in a cholera epidemic that Mugabe has concealed and claims does not exist.

Aided by U.S. sanctions, Mugabe soon took over the country, jailing Bishop Muzorewa. His North Korean-trained security forces then killed perhaps 25,000 members of the minority Ndebele tribe, forcing torture victims to sing praises to Mugabe even as they were savagely tortured, and forcing people to torture their own family members, sometimes to death. Guilty white liberals, who had lionized Mugabe as a saintly opponent of racism and representative of black Zimbabweans, did not know what to make of this, and either remained silent, or kept praising him. Mugabe’s government received billions of dollars in aid, which finally stopped after Mugabe destroyed his country’s economy by seizing the country’s white-owned commercial farms and giving them to his incompetent political cronies. More recently, Mugabe so mismanaged his country’s crumbling economy and infrastructure that an easily-preventable cholera epidemic broke out, killing thousands.

During his presidency, Carter was blind to Mugabe’s faults because he saw Mugabe through a prism of racial guilt, seeing a Third-World post-colonial conflict as a reenactment of the U.S. civil-rights movement.

(The subsequent election, which Kibaki was declared to have won after likely election fraud, led to a violent ethnic conflict, including ethnic cleansing by Odinga supporters, that ended only when Kibaki appointed Odinga Prime Minister and ceded to him much of his presidential powers. Today, Kibaki and Odinga are jointly looting the Kenyan treasury to enrich themselves and their supporters).

Obama apparently saw his meddling in the politics of another country as righting past racial wrongs, since Kibaki’s Kikuyu have historically fared better than Odinga’s economically-backward Luo tribe, which counted Obama’s father as a member. But Kenya is not America during the civil-rights movement, and it was foolhardy for Obama to meddle in African politics, just as it was foolhardy for Carter to do so three decades earlier in Zimbabawe. Fortunately, the man Obama supported in Kenya (Odinga) does not appear to be as evil as the man Carter supported in Zimbabwe (Mugabe).

Copyright 2009 Examiner.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

July 21 (Bloomberg) -- Senator :S:d1">Jim DeMint delayed confirmation of President :S:d1">Barack Obama’s nominee for the top U.S. diplomatic post for Latin America over dissatisfaction with the administration’s handling of the Honduran political crisis.

In a letter dated today, the South Carolina Republican asked Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman :S:d1">John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, to postpone voting to confirm :S:d1">Arturo Valenzuela as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs until the committee’s next business meeting.

DeMint also asked Kerry to temporarily block the nomination of :S:d1">Thomas Shannon, who currently occupies that post, as ambassador to Brazil.

A copy of the letter was obtained by Bloomberg News.

Obama “rushed to side” with Cuba’s :S:d1">Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President :S:d1">Hugo Chavez in calling the June 28 overthrow of Honduran President :S:d1">Manuel Zelaya a coup “before getting the facts,” DeMint said in an e-mailed statement. “Now it’s clear that the people of Honduras were defending the rule of law.”

DeMint was among 17 Republican lawmakers who complained to Secretary of State :S:d1">Hillary Clinton over her refusal to meet in Washington with representatives of the interim government named by Honduras’s congress after Zelaya was ousted by the military at gunpoint.

Valenzuela defended the White House’s decision to condemn the overthrow as a coup and suspend aid to Honduras, Central America’s third poorest nation, at the foreign relations panel’s hearing on his nomination.

‘Classic Coup’

“In my studies of military coups in Latin America, this was a classic military coup,” he said at the July 9 hearing.

When pressed by DeMint about whether Honduras’s military acted to defend the constitution against abuses by Zelaya, Valenzuela said “I don’t want to get into some of the details of this. I’m not familiar myself with all of the details.”

DeMint said Valenzuela’s responses were unsatisfactory. “Mr. Valenzuela told me he didn’t even know the facts in Honduras,” DeMint said in the statement today. “Yet, everyday Zelaya’s own statements reveal his true desire to be a Chavez- style dictator advocating violence in order to return to power.”

DeMint also said that Shannon, in his State Department post, “has still failed to show a clear understanding of Honduras’s fight to defend democracy.”

‘Insurrection’ Planned

Zelaya said July 19 that his supporters were organizing an “insurrection” to return to power, as negotiations mediated by Costa Rican President :S:d1">Oscar Arias stalled.

Honduras’s institutions and business groups remain united in support of Zelaya’s overthrow. The Supreme Court ruled that Zelaya violated the constitution by trying to hold an illegal poll on whether people support his proposal to change the constitution. The court issued a sealed arrest order for the president on June 26, two days before his overthrow.

Zelaya also ignored a court order that said he couldn’t fire the head of the military for refusing to oversee the survey, and stormed a military base with a mob of civilians to “liberate” the ballots.

:S:d1">Eric Farnsworth, the Washington-based vice president of the Council of the Americas, said the Senate may delay action on the nominations until after its month long summer recess, which begins August 7.

‘Open Question’

“It’s an open question what DeMint really wants,” he said in a telephone interview. “If the goal is to change the course of policy on Honduras,” the battle over the nominations “could be extended.”

The Chilean-born Valenzuela is director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University. He previously served President :S:d1">Bill Clinton as the White House’s top national security adviser on Latin America.

In the July 8 letter DeMint and 16 other Republican senators sent to Clinton, they complained about her refusal to meet with envoys of acting Honduran President :S:d1">Roberto Micheletti earlier this month in Washington.

“Given the turbulent history of Latin America, we can understand, but disagree with, the rush to label the events of June 28th a coup d’etat,” the senators wrote in the letter. “While you have already met with Mr. Zelaya, we find it discouraging that you are unwilling to meet with Honduran officials that have simply followed their constitution.”

Representative :S:d1">Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, met today with Shannon and State Department legal advisers to request that the U.S. restore $20 million in assistance to Honduras that was suspended following Zelaya’s ouster.

“It is deeply troubling that, after so much time, energy and effort has been expended by the U.S. to help the Honduran people consolidate and strengthen their democratic institutions, the U.S. position appears to remain focused on Zelaya’s political and personal future,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement following the meeting.

To contact the reporter on this story: :S:d1">Joshua Goodman in Rio de Janeiro [email protected]

Obama Just Might Be a Socialist

Have you read the headlines this past week? Obama has proposed trillions of dollars in new taxes, and trillions of dollars of irresponsible, unsustainable new spending.

He’s offered no way to pay for it all, except to wipe out small businessmen and women, and wipe out the upper middle class, and enslave our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt and heavy taxes for a lifetime. It is, plainly and simply, the very definition of socialism.

Let's say it out loud — Obama is a socialist.

There isn't any need to debate anymore. No point in even arguing. If liberals and the biased liberal media won't face facts, then I'm going to put the facts right in their faces. Up close and personal. Jeff Foxworthy-style.

If you want government to take over business, banks, carmakers, Wall Street, and highjack the entire economy, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you think it's just fine and dandy for government to decide CEO salaries, to hire and fire CEOs, and pick the board of directors of private companies, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you think 32 czars appointed by Obama can run the American economy by committee, even though few if any have ever run a business, and if you think it's OK to appoint a car czar who admits publicly he knows NOTHING about cars, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you want to give as much as $100 billion dollars of taxpayer money to GM and Chrysler just so they can go bankrupt anyway but then hand the company to the unions that bankrupted them in first place, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you think it's OK for government to tell GM and Chrysler what kind of cars to build . . . what size . . . what gas mileage . . . even if those "green cars" can never make a profit . . . even if the taxpayers will lose $100 billion dollars, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you think it's perfectly acceptable to break the “rule of law” and shaft shareholders, bondholders, bankers, hedge funds, and secured creditors who took tremendous risks and loaned billions of dollars to Chrysler and are therefore first in line in any bankruptcy proceeding, and own 100 percent of Chrysler by legal contract so that you can hand a majority ownership to your friends in the auto unions who are last in line and completely unsecured by law but who gave you millions of dollars in campaign contributions, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you want to pass cap and trade and convert America to a “green economy” to create millions of jobs even though Spain is the greenest economy in all of Europe and they have 18 percent unemployment, the highest in all of socialist Europe, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you support cap and trade, a giant expansion of government power and control over industry, that is the biggest tax increase in history, that will double or triple every American's electric bills and make gasoline go up to $5 or $6 per gallon and increase the cost of every product made with electricity, or driven to stores with gasoline and put entire industries out of business and cost millions of American jobs because China and India won't participate, all during a depression, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you support universal healthcare, even though a huge majority of Americans are happy with their present plan and government is the one that has screwed up healthcare in the first place with over-regulation even though government has run the U.S. postal service into bankruptcy and run Amtrak into bankruptcy and the public school system is a shambles and loses tens of billions per year and Medicare and Medicaid threaten to bankrupt the entire economy with their gigantic losses and government has run up a $5.3 trillion dollar unfunded liability just for pensions and free healthcare for government employees and you think government is the answer to cutting the costs of healthcare, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you propose paying for universal healthcare with taxes on the health benefits of every employee in America except union employees, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you want to lower the cost of healthcare, but you won't support tort reform even though lawyers and legal abuse and waste and fraud combine to cost the healthcare system almost one trillion dollars a year, and you're a lawyer yourself, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you propose paying for universal healthcare by punishing "the rich" with a 5 percent surcharge on their incomes even though that same group you are punishing (small business owners) already pays virtually all the taxes and creates 75 percent of the jobs in America, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you support a VAT tax just like socialist Europe, one that puts a deadly tax on every product in America at every level of production and purchase on top of all our other state, federal, and local taxes, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you support card check, which takes away the right of Americans to vote in private and allows unions to intimidate employees while they are forced to vote publicly to unionize, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you are in favor of bailouts of certain companies and certain industries who just happen to give you large campaign contributions, all with taxpayer money, and you don't even ask the permission of the taxpayers, and you don't or won't disclose who got the money or how much, and you don't even say please or thank you, even though it's our money paying for it all, and you never even bothered to read the 1,000-plus page bailout bill (delivered to you only hours before you voted yes), YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you believe it's greedy for American taxpayers to want to keep more of their own money, but it's not greedy to demand that government confiscate other people's money and redistribute to you even though you didn't earn it, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you call it a “tax cut” when you give a welfare check to people that never paid taxes in the first place…YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you propose the biggest income tax increase in history on "the rich" and take away deductions from "the rich" including mortgage deductions that threaten to wipe out the entire housing market and also raise the capital gains taxes of "the rich" and also take the cap off FICA taxes on "the rich" and also bring back the death tax on "the rich” and also universal healthcare surcharges on "the rich," all while taxpayers are being hit with higher state income taxes, higher state sales taxes, and higher property taxes all in the middle of a depression, and you think that's “small and reasonable and fair,” YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you like the nanny state; if you like the results of the Michigan economy run by unions (the first state to hit 15 percent unemployment) — or worse, the California economy — and you want to turn the whole of America into one big Michigan or one big California, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you think all your friends deserve a government job for life and should belong to a government employees union and get paid obscene salaries far higher than the private sector and receive bloated pensions for life and receive free healthcare for life and a guaranteed job for life, even though many of them couldn't get a private sector job, all for just sitting at a desk for 25 years looking at their watch waiting for retirement at age 50 so they can collect a fat pension for the next 40 (or more) years, and you want to pay for all that on the taxpayer's dime, YOU MAY BE A SOCIALIST.

By the way — if after all that you're a Columbia University economics professor, and you ever gave a student named Barack Obama an A, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

If you think school choice and charter schools and vouchers are bad, even though they have helped countless minority children trapped in failing hellholes called public schools; if you think competition is bad and public schools should have no competition; if you think rewarding good teachers with higher pay and firing bad teachers is a bad idea; if you think people have no right to decide where to use their own property tax money to choose the best education possible for their children; YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST.

And If you think it's perfectly fine to appoint a Supreme Court justice for life, who thinks that a Latina woman can make better decisions from the bench than a white male simply because of the color of her skin, YOU MIGHT BE A RACIST.

Ladies and gentleman I think it's safe to say that our country, our economy, our education system, and capitalism itself is being run and ruined by SOCIALISTS, RACISTS, and IDIOTS.

It's time to stand up; it's time to fight; it's time to put manners and politeness aside; it's time to offend; it's time to yell, scream, protest and get angry; it's time to take action; it's time to take back our country before there is no country or economy left to take back, before the American Dream is dead, before capitalism is destroyed, before our children are enslaved by big government and big taxes for generations to come . . . I believe that it is time for a citizen revolution.

Wayne Allyn Root was the 2008 Libertarian vice presidential candidate. His latest book is entitled, “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts.” Visit his Web site at www.ROOTforAmerica.com.

Honduras' interim government sends lobbying team to US hoping to head off threatened sanctions

Tue, 2009-07-21 06:56.

By: Mark Stevenson, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - The soldiers, politicians and businessmen who ousted left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya are taking their battle from Honduras into the U.S. political arena, waging a lobbying campaign to paint themselves as a bulwark against "dictatorship" and "communism."

Appealing to free trade supporters, they hope to nudge the Obama administration away from its threat to impose sanctions on the impoverished country, where export-assembly factories are dominated by U.S. firms and investors.

"I imagine there would be some reaction from them" to trade sanctions, Amilcar Bulnes, head of the Honduran Council of Private Business, said Monday.

The de facto government led by interim President Roberto Micheletti took pains to put together a lobbying effort that is diverse and representative. The team sent to Washington on Monday includes a Christian Democrat labour leader and a university law professor who is in an opposition party.

Zelaya's foes appear to hope President Barack Obama doesn't have the time or energy for this battle when he has weightier problems like his push to reform the U.S. health care system and turn around the economy.

"Honduras is a small, poor country," Bulnes said. "The world would look very bad if it takes out its wrath on this country."

The lobbying team left for the U.S. as Washington was turning up pressure on the Micheletti government by warning that Honduras could face severe economic sanctions if Zelaya is not restored to the presidency.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Micheletti on Sunday to say there would be serious consequences if his government keeps ignoring international calls for Zelaya's return - the key point that led to a stalemate in U.S.-supported negotiations over the weekend mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.

Business executives say U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens has called them into meetings to warn that Honduras - heavily dependent on exports to the United States - could face tough sanctions if leaders continue to refuse Arias' compromise proposal for Zelaya to return as head of a coalition government. The U.S. Embassy said it would not comment on the meetings.

The European Union added to the pressure Monday by announcing it was suspending $93.1 million (65.5 million euros) in aid to Honduras. The EU's external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, called the standoff over Zelaya "a crisis which Honduras can ill afford."

No government has recognized the Micheletti administration, and the United Nations and Organization of American States have called for the return of Zelaya, who was arrested and hustled out of the country by the army on June 28.

Micheletti vowed not to back down - and implied that Washington is betraying a staunch ally, one that let its territory be used as a staging area for U.S.-backed Contra rebels battling Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government during the 1980s and more recently sent troops to Iraq.

"We feel abandoned by several friendly countries," Micheletti said in a speech to cheering supporters. "We are going to demonstrate ... that we have the strength to hold out until the last moment."

Referring to Clinton's phone call, Micheletti suggested she send an envoy to Honduras to see that the government is not persecuting Zelaya's supporters, who have staged daily demonstrations demanding his return.

Micheletti vowed to stay in power until a scheduled Nov. 29 presidential vote, which the United States has suggested it may not recognize if it is held under a de facto government.

"We are going to go on with life, we are going to go on with our government, we are going to go on with the next presidential elections on Nov. 29," he said. "They have to respect us."

Business leaders - a key sector of support for Micheletti - also vowed to tough it out, hoping the U.S. government is as wary as they are of Zelaya, who has aligned himself with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, one of Washington's biggest antagonists in the region.

Zelaya angered many people in Honduras by ignoring Congress'and the courts' objections to his effort to hold a referendum on changing the constitution, which many saw as an attempt to impose a Chavez-style socialist government.

"We prefer sanctions to Zelaya's return," said Adolfo Facusse, head of the country's National Association of Industries. He said restoring Zelaya to power would bring the "loss of liberty, dictatorship, communism."

Top-rated radio host Rush Limbaugh, upset that he's forced to report his every movement to tax authorities, blasted President Obama for failing to prove he is natural-born citizen of the United States.

On his show today, Limbaugh told listeners, "As you know, I'm in the midst of another harassing audit from New York State and New York City for the last three years. We're up to 16 different ways I have to prove to New York City and state tax authorities where I have been every day – not just work week – but every day, for the past three years."

He continued, "Barack Obama has yet to have to prove that he's a citizen. All he has to do is show a birth certificate. He has yet to have to prove he's a citizen. I have to show them 14 different ways where the h--- I am every day of the year for three years."

Later in the show, Limbaugh showed a video of a woman criticizing Rep. Mike Castle for ignoring the birth certificate issue during a Delaware town meeting. She presented her own birth certificate, signed by a doctor, and asked why Obama hasn't been compelled to do the same.

Woman: I want to go back to Jan. 20, and I want to know, why are you people ignoring his birth certificate? (cheers and applause) He is not an American citizen. He is a citizen of Kenya. I am American. My father worked – fought in World War II with the greatest generation in the Pacific theater for this country, and I don't want this flag to change. I want my country back! (cheers and applause)

Castle: If you're referring to the president there, he is a citizen of the United States. (crowd shouting)

Woman: All the men and women who died for this country in 1776 'til the present time. I think we should all stand up and give Pledge of Allegiance to that wonderful flag (cheers and applause) people that sacrificed their lives for our freedom. Everybody stand up.

Everyone in the room stood and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

"The crowd went nuts," Limbaugh noted. "There's all kinds of stuff bubbling up out there."

As WND reported, concerns about Obama's long-form birth certificate and eligibility also got a boost when Limbaugh joked several times about the subject in comparing Obama to God on his June 10 show.

Limbaugh previously mentioned the birth certificate issue just days before the 2008 election, when Obama's campaign announced the candidate would rush to Hawaii to visit his dying grandmother, but took several days before actually making the trip. Limbaugh said on Oct. 23:

See, I think this is about something else. You know what's really percolating out there? I've been laying low on this because it hasn't met the threshold to pass the smell test on this program.

This birth certificate business, this lawsuit that a guy named Philip Berg filed in Philadelphia in August for Obama to produce his genuine birth certificate and he still hasn't replied. You've got a deathly ill grandmother, you are going to rush to her side a few days from now, when you first announced this, you're going to rush, you're going to hurry, you're going to make tracks, you're going to get over there because you don't want your grandmother to die before you got there like your mother did, but somehow you keep campaigning, you take three days to get over there, if he's left yet, and this birth certificate business, I'm just wondering if something's up. I have no clue, and folks, I'm telling you, this has not reached the threshold until now, and it's popping up all over the place. There are a lot of people now that are starting to speculate and be curious about this.

I don't know, let's say for example that somebody does come up with proof that something's screwy with his birth certificate and something's screwy about the fact that he's allegedly a natural citizen, American citizen, but may not be, dual citizenship, born in Kenya, who knows, there's all kinds of stuff out – so what? What's going to happen this late in the campaign? Do you think if it's proven that they're going to dump him? That's not going to happen. But still, these are just questions that I have. And, look, both of my parents have died. When I was told the end was near, bam, I got there, fast as I could. I didn't announce to the audience, "I just got word my father is said to be passing away and in four or five days I'm going to go to Missouri. In the meantime, I will not leave you here on this radio program." These are just natural questions. I think any inquisitive reporter – I know the risk I'm running here by raising all this. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't do that.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.

WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

While much of the world has lined up with Manuel Zelaya, the ousted president of Honduras, time and truth do not seem to be his cause's friend. The latest shoe to drop is a shocking Catalan newspaper report stating that Honduran authorities have discovered 45 computers containing election results for an election that never took place.

No, this isn't the Twilight Zone — it's the Corruption Zone.

As many know, Zelaya was ousted by the Honduran military on June 28 under orders from the nation's supreme court, which had ruled that his intention to hold a national referendum designed to extend his power was unconstitutional. In response, many world leaders — among them, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and Barack Obama — labeled the action a coup that marked a dark day for democracy. Yet, the best information we have indicates that legitimate Honduran authorities were simply acting in defense of the rule of law. That is to say, Zelaya wished to change a constitutional provision limiting presidents to one term, despite the fact that his nation's constitution forbids such an alteration. Additionally, the power to call for a constitutional assembly is vested in the Honduran congress, not its president.

Yet, despite the fact that the ouster of Zelaya served to remedy a crisis, world leaders have claimed that the remedy itself is a crisis. However, if a report by Europapress.cat is correct, it may now be more difficult than ever to take up the cudgels for the Central American who would be king. The news source reveals that election data in the computers in question showed, not surprisingly, an overwhelming victory for Zelaya in the proposed June 28 referendum. As an example, Europapress tells us (it's a Spanish source; what follows is a computer translation that I have cleaned up): "One of the district attorneys who took part in the operation this Friday showed the mass media an electoral record of the Technical Institute Luis Bográn, of Tegucigalpa, in which . . . there were 550 paper ballots, of which 450 were affirmative votes for Zelaya's proposal and 30 were against, in addition to 20 votes in target and 30 void ones." (Click here for a translation of the whole article.)

Despite this, our nation and the European Union are still lobbying for the would-be tyrant's return to power. In fact, the United States is now ratcheting up the pressure. FoxNews.com reports on this, writing, "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called de factor [sic] Honduran leader Roberto Micheletto [sic] to warn him about the consequences for his country if it does not permit ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to return to power, the State Department said Monday."

To be specific, Clinton is threatening to follow the European Union's lead and deny Honduras monetary aid. The EU has already suspended $90 million in aid to the hapless Central American republic.

I would also like to mention that it's ironic that Fox News misspelled "de facto," as it's the one term that probably doesn't belong in the article. It seems more accurate to call Micheletti a de jure president (in law). "De facto" might better describe the man who occupies our presidency — that is, if allegations concerning Obama's birth certificate are correct.

As for the time-warp election in Honduras, certain questions remain unanswered. There is no word yet on whether Mayor Daley was a consultant, if dead people had cast ballots, or if Jimmy Carter was an observer.

The U.S. Steers Left on Honduras

Why would Hugo Chavez expect Obama to help him?

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

When Hugo Chávez makes a personal appeal to Washington for help, as he did 11 days ago, it raises serious questions about the signals that President Barack Obama is sending to the hemisphere's most dangerous dictator.

At issue is Mr. Chávez's determination to restore deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya to power through multilateral pressure. His phone call to a State Department official showed that his campaign was not going well and that he thought he could get U.S. help.

This is not good news for the region. The Venezuelan may feel that his aims have enough support from the U.S. and the Organization of American States (OAS) that he would be justified in forcing Mr. Zelaya on Honduras by supporting a violent overthrow of the current government. That he has reason to harbor such a view is yet another sign that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history.

In the three weeks since the Honduran Congress moved to defend the country's constitution by relieving Mr. Zelaya of his presidential duties, it has become clear that his arrest was both lawful and a necessary precaution against violence.

The Americas in the News

Mr. Zelaya was trying to use mob rule to undermine Honduras's institutions in much the same way that Mr. Chávez has done in Venezuela. But as Washington lawyer Miguel Estrada pointed out in the Los Angeles Times on July 10, Mr. Zelaya's actions were expressly forbidden by the Honduran constitution.

"Article 239," Mr. Estrada noted, "specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection 'shall cease forthwith' in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any 'infraction' of the succession rules constitutes treason." Congress had little choice but to take its next step. It convened "immediately after Zelaya's arrest," Mr. Estrada wrote, "condemning his illegal conduct, and overwhelmingly voting (122-6) to remove him from office."

Mr. Zelaya was shipped out of the country because Honduras believed that jailing him would make him a lightning rod for violence. Interim President Roberto Micheletti promised that presidential elections scheduled for November would go forward.

That might have been the end of it if the U.S. had supported the Honduran rule of law, or simply refrained from meddling. Instead President Obama and the State Department joined Mr. Chávez and his allies in demanding that Mr. Zelaya be restored to power. This has emboldened Venezuela.

On July 5, Mr. Zelaya boarded a plane manned by a Venezuelan crew bound for Tegucigalpa, knowing full well that he would not be allowed to land. It didn't matter. His intention was to incite a mob on the ground and force a confrontation between his supporters and the military. It worked. One person was killed in clashes near the airport.

Yet the tragedy did not produce the desired condemnation of the Micheletti government. Rather, it empowered Honduran patriots. Perhaps this is because the airport violence reinforced the claim that Mr. Zelaya is a threat to the peace.

He was not the only one to lose credibility that day. OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza had encouraged the fly-over stunt despite its obvious risks. He even traveled in a separate plane behind Mr. Zelaya to show support. The incident destroyed any possibility that Mr. Insulza could be considered an honest broker. It also proved the charge that by insisting on Mr. Zelaya's return the U.S. was playing with fire.

The next day Costa Rican President Oscar Arias offered to act as a mediator between Mr. Zelaya and the new government. Mr. Arias would seem to be far from an impartial referee given that he is a supporter of Mr. Zelaya. Yet it is also true that Central America has the most to lose if Honduras descends into civil war. It follows that the San José venue offers better odds for the Honduran democracy than, say, the auspices of the OAS.

Other influential Central Americans have expressed support for Honduras. Last week the Honduran daily El Heraldo reported that Salvador's OAS ambassador said he hopes to see the resolution that suspended Honduras from the group revoked under the new permanent-council president. Catholic Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga has condemned Mr. Zelaya's violent tactics and says that Honduras does not want to emulate Venezuela.

Mr. Chávez understands that Mr. Zelaya's star is fading, which is why he called Tom Shannon, the State Department's assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere at home at 11:15 p.m on July 9. Mr. Shannon told me that Mr. Chávez "again made the case for the unconditional return of Mr. Zelaya, though he did so in a less bombastic manner than he has in the past."

Mr. Shannon says that in response he "suggested to him that Venezuela and its [allies] address the fear factor by calling for free and fair elections and a peaceful transition to a new government." That, Mr. Shannon, says, "hasn't happened."

Nor is it likely to. Yet the U.S. continues exerting enormous pressure for the return of Mr. Zelaya. If it prevails, it is unlikely that Mr. Zelaya's mobs or Mr. Chávez will suddenly be tamed.

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He may be the most mysterious and secretive president in American history.

Though inexperienced and arguably unqualified for the presidency, he mesmerized the entire establishment press and more than half of voters, many regarding him nothing short of a political messiah. Though he can barely speak publicly without a teleprompter, he's praised as a transcendent communicator. Though his voting record is extreme left, he portrays himself as a pragmatic centrist.

But beyond Obama's political ideology, many Americans are troubled also by his strange personalityattributes: He greatly exaggerates his achievements, expects constant praise and admiration, believes he's special, doesn't appear to concern himself with other people's feelings, expresses disdain for those he feels are inferior, sets unrealistic goals, appears as tough-minded and unemotional, and other qualities – all of which are textbook symptoms of Narcissistic PersonalityDisorder. ......

-------------------------------

ZELAYA IS ANOTHER ONE WITH SYMPTOMS OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER. HE ORDERED A STATUE AND A BUST OF HIMSELF IT WAS FOUND IN THE PRESIDENTIAL HOUSE.

Obama and Honduras

It's All About the Constitution

Liberals who have idealized Obama don't want to believe that their President is capable of bullish behavior towards Latin America. It was Bush, they say, who epitomized arrogant U.S.-style imperialism and not the new resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Recent events in Central America however force us to look at the Obama administration in a sobering new light. While it's unclear whether Obama had advance warning of an imminent military coup d'etat in Honduras the White House has not emerged from the Zelaya affair unsullied.

In December, 2008, even before his inauguration, Obama received an irate letter from Honduran president Manuel Zelaya demanding an end to arrogant and interventionist U.S. ambassadors in Tegucigalpa. Just eight months earlier American ambassador Hugo Llorens had taken on the government by making inflammatory remarks. During a press conference the diplomat declared that Zelaya's move to rewrite the constitution was "a Honduran matter and it's a delicate matter to comment on as a foreign diplomat." But then, contradicting himself and inserting himself into the volatile political milieu, Llorens remarked that "one can't violate the constitution to create a constitution, because if you don't have a constitution the law of the jungle reigns."

If Obama was serious about restoring U.S. moral credibility world-wide he might have cleaned house by removing Bush appointees such as Llorens. An émigré from Castro's Cuba, Llorens worked as an Assistant Treasurer at Chase Manhattan Bank before entering the Foreign Service. As Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Policy and Summit Coordination in the State Department during Clinton-time, he played an important role in spearheading the corporately-friendly Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA. But it was chiefly during the Bush years that Llorens distinguished himself, serving as the Director of Andean Affairs at the National Security Council. At the NSC, Llorens was the most important advisor to Bush and Condoleezza Rice on matters pertaining to Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.

While Zelaya's move to rewrite the Honduran constitution antagonized Llorens it also inflamed the local business elite and no doubt the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Perhaps these groups feared a Honduran repeat of the South American "Pink Tide": across the region leftist leaders from Hugo Chávez to Rafael Correa have mobilized civil society in an effort to rewrite their respective nations' constitutions.

Chávez's 1999 constitution provides for some of the most comprehensive human rights provisions of any constitution in the world while also including special protection for women, indigenous peoples and the environment. The constitution moreover allows for broad citizen participation in national life. The preamble states that one of the Constitution's goals is to establish a participatory democracy achieved through elected representatives, popular votes by referendum and, perhaps most importantly, popular mobilization. In Venezuela, it was Chávez's constitution which helped to solidify his alliance with traditionally marginalized sectors of the population.

In Ecuador, traditional political parties and wealthy elites labeled Correa "dictatorial" after the president called for the drafting of a new constitution. In the end however a large plurality of voters approved the new 2008 constitution which provides for free universal health care, a universal right to water and prohibition of its privatization and the redistribution of large unused landholdings. Even more dramatically, the constitution declares that Ecuador is a "pacifist state" and outlaws foreign military bases on Ecuadoran soil.

As I explain in my recent book Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008), there's been a potent alliance as of late between leftist Latin leaders on the one hand and dynamic social movements on the other. In Ecuador, the main indigenous federation supported the new constitution as did organized labor. Indeed, Correa's move to draft a new constitution could help to establish tighter links between the president and progressive social forces as per Chávez's Venezuela.

In the media, the Honduran imbroglio has been depicted as a struggle over presidential power and term limits. But while any new constitution might have extended presidential term limits, such a reform could have also led to new progressive amendments to the law and further radicalization on the ground. In recent years Honduras has seen the emergence of a vibrant social and political scene including labor, Garifuna (Afro-Honduran people) and Indians. If Zelaya had been successful at pushing through his constitutional reform he would have been able to mobilize such groups.

What is the connection between U.S. interests and constitutional reform? If you had any doubt about Washington's true intentions in Honduras consider the following AP Report for July 8 about diplomatic negotiations between the coup regime and ousted president Zelaya: "Clinton would not discuss specifics of the mediation process, which she said would begin soon, but a senior U.S. official said one option being considered would be to forge a compromise under which Zelaya would be allowed to return and serve out his remaining six months in office with limited powers [italics added]. Zelaya, in return, would pledge to drop his aspirations for a constitutional change."

It's the State Department then under Hillary Clinton, allied in spirit to figures from the old Bush establishment, which is seeking to cut off constitutional reform in Honduras --- reform which could lead to popular mobilization as we've seen in Ecuador and Venezuela. Obama meanwhile has condemned the coup but his failure to rein in either Llorens or Clinton suggests that he too believes that Zelaya's proposal for a constitutional reform is dangerous and needs to be halted.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave, 2006) and Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008). Check out his Web site at http://senorchichero.blogspot.com

Smoking Gun: Zelaya Computers had 'certified' results for referendum that was never held

Rick MoranThis has been all over the Honduran and Central American press for more than 24 hours but, as Alberto de la Cruz of Babalu Blog points out, no English speaking wire service or media has picked up on it yet.

Authorities seized several computers used by former president Zelaya that contained "official" results of the constitutional referendum that was never held showing his bid to change the law so that he could run for office again winning easily.

De la Cruz translates the story from a Catalan Newspaper (Europa Press):

Several computers containing the results of the referendum Zelaya wanted to conduct are seized at the Presidential Palace

The National Directors of Criminal Investigation seized various computers from the Presidential Palace that had recorded the supposed results of the referendum to reform the constitution that the deposed leader, Manuel Zelaya, was planning to conduct on July 28, the day he was removed from office.

The official investigation now deals with the possible crime of fraud and falsification of documents due to the fact that some of the certified voting results had been filled with the personal information of individuals that supposedly participated in the failed referendum that did not take place because of the coup.

One of the district attorneys that participated in the operation that took place this Friday showed reporters an official voting result from the Technical Institute Luis Bogran, of Tegucigalpa, in which the specific number of people that participated in table 345, where there were 550 ballots, 450 of which were votes in favor of Zelaya's proposal and 30 were against, in addition to 20 blank ballots and 30 ballots, which were nullified.

The seizure took place on the third floor of the building attached to the Ministry of the Presidency that had been rented to the ex-minister of the Interior, Enrique Flores Lanza. The deputy district attorney, Roberto Ramirez, declared this area as a "crime scene" and, although he did not want to provide further details, said that further evidence had been found that could be categorized as crimes of fraud, embezzlement of funds, falsification of documents, and abuse of authority.

The news has even been reported in Nicaragua. But for some reason, total silence reigns in the English speaking world.

It appears certain the the Honduran people narrowly avoided the prospect of a Chavez clone setting up shop as a dictator for life in their country. Only the courageous actions of their political, military, and judicial leaders avoided catastrophe.

I am ashamed of our president and government that they continue to support Zelaya at the expense of Honduran freedom. And I am ashamed of our media who obviously backed the wrong horse and are too arrogant to admit it.

Supporters of ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya protest outside the site of talks to resolve the leadership crisis in Honduras in San Jose, Saturday, July 18, 2009. Zelaya, who was forced into exile in a June 28 military coup, gave negotiators meeting in Costa Rica until midnight to restore him to office, threatening to return to Honduras in secret and attempt to retake power on his own if no agreement is reached. He indicated he would reject any power-sharing agreement, a proposal to be discussed at the talks. (AP Photo/Kent Gilbert)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------NOTE: SAME MAN LOOK ALIKE CHE IN COSTA RICA TODAY WAS IN HONDURAS BEFORE

Citizens of the small Central American country Honduras are getting tired of the bad rap they have taken by removing their President before he could declare a dicatorship. They've taken to the streets for the past few days eager to send us all a message about what is really happening.

A pictorial of their demonstrations contrasts with the image of communist inspired violence in the streets:

People demonstrate against ousted president Manuel Zelaya and in demand of peace and democracy, at Morazan Square in central Tegucigalpa, on June 30, 2009. Tensions were running high in Honduras Tuesday with new street protests planned as deposed Zelaya vowed to return only days after being ousted in an army-backed coup.

Supporters of ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya hold up placards during a march in downtown Tegucigalpa July 1, 2009.

A man holds a banner during a demonstration against ousted president Manuel Zelaya and in demand of peace and democracy, at Morazan Square in central Tegucigalpa, on June 30, 2009.

The poster reads, "Yes to democracy, not to dictatorship of Chavez".

A woman holds a sign reading: "We are happy Mel. Do not come back."

Contrast the above with this:

A demonstrator throws a Molotov cocktail during clashes between supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and armed forces in Tegucigalpa on June 29, 2009.

And if you want to know who is behind the violence, here's a clue:

A demonstrator holds a banner of the late Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara during a show of support for ousted Honduras President Manuel Zelaya outside the Ministry of Foreign Relations in San Jose July 1, 2009.

Yep, the same old communist evil that has been directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands and the oppression of millions more thoughout Latin America.

Original in Spanish; computer translation and then clean-up by me.Tegucigalpa -- The National Direction of Criminal Investigation confiscated computers in the Presidential House in which were registered the supposed results of the referendum on the reform of the Constitution that was planned by former President Manuel Zelaya on last June 28, the day that he was ousted.

The District attorney's Office will investigate now if it is a possible crime of fraud and forgery of the documents, due to that some had been filled with the data of the people that supposedly had participated in the failed referendum. One of the public prosecutors that participated in the operating one carried out yesterday showed to the mass media an electoral minutes of the Technical Institute Luis Bogran, of Tegucigalpa, in which the number of people is specified that participated on the table 345, where 550 ballots were counted of which 450 were votes in favor of the proposal of Zelaya and 30 in against, besides 20 blank votes and 30 voided.

Cheez, it's like Chicago ...The seizure was carried out on the third storey of the building annex to the Department of the Presidency that had been rented the former home secretary, Enrique Flowers Throws.

The public prosecutor, Roberto Ramírez, declared that zone as the "scene of the crime" and, although he wanted to need more details, said that the found evidence would be able to characterize the crimes of fraud, embezzlement, forgery of documents and abuse of authority. Ramírez did not rule out that these computers were to be utilized in the final count of the referendum.

"This group of some 45 computers, by the appearance that present, they would be used for the launch of the supposed final results of the quarter ballot box", he explained. The computers belonged to the project 'Learns' of the Honduran Counsel of Science and Technology directed towards rural schools. All of the computers had been lettered with the name of the department for the one that would transmit the information accompanied by a document with the headline: "Leaf of test", that contained all the data of the centers of voting.

The public prosecutor also indicated that there was evidence of documents, hardware and tests that could give light in the investigations on the possible fraud.

During the last months of his mandate, Zelaya promoted the referendum that had been called for last June 28, in which the population would be asked consider the possibility of forming a Constituent assembly so as to reform the constitution. The consultation was ruled "illegal" by the Supreme Court of Justice and was also rejected, since the beginning, by the opposition that alleged that the idea to reform the Constitution responded to the interests of Zelaya to establish in the country the indefinite reelection of the president

A Spanish Catalan newspaper is reporting that Honduran authorities have seized computers found in the Presidential Palace belonging to deposed president Mel Zelaya. Taking a page right out of the leftist dictator's handbook, these computers, according to the news report, contained the official and certified results of the illegal constitutional referendum Zelaya wanted to conduct that never took place. The results of this fraudulent vote was tilted heavily in Zelaya's favor, ensuring he could go ahead and illegally change the constitution so he could remain in power for as long as he wanted to. ACORN, I'm sure, is taking notes.

This is the man that the OAS, the UN, and the Obama State Department want the Honduran people to reinstall as their leader.

Several computers containing the results of the referendum Zelaya wanted to conduct are seized at the Presidential Palace

The National Directors of Criminal Investigation seized various computers from the Presidential Palace that had recorded the supposed results of the referendum to reform the constitution that the deposed leader, Manuel Zelaya, was planning to conduct on July 28, the day he was removed from office.

The official investigation now deals with the possible crime of fraud and falsification of documents due to the fact that some of the certified voting results had been filled with the personal information of individuals that supposedly participated in the failed referendum that did not take place because of the coup.

One of the district attorneys that participated in the operation that took place this Friday showed reporters an official voting result from the Technical Institute Luis Bogran, of Tegucigalpa, in which the specific number of people that participated in table 345, where there were 550 ballots, 450 of which were votes in favor of Zelaya's proposal and 30 were against, in addition to 20 blank ballots and 30 ballots, which were nullified.

The seizure took place on the third floor of the building attached to the Ministry of the Presidency that had been rented to the ex-minister of the Interior, Enrique Flores Lanza. The deputy district attorney, Roberto Ramirez, declared this area as a "crime scene" and, although he did not want to provide further details, said that further evidence had been found that could be categorized as crimes of fraud, embezzlement of funds, falsification of documents, and abuse of authority.

As of the time of this post, I have not been able to find any news of this in the English press, which, of course, does not surprise me. If any of you find something, please post a link in the comments section.

July 18 - Europa Presss is reporting that Honduran police has seized several computers that were stored at the Presidential Palace of deposed President Manuel Zelaya, which contain the "official results" of the referendum that never took place.

Zelaya wanted to hold a referendum to see if the majority of the population was in favor of making changes to the Honduras constitution, that would allow him to become president for life like Hugo Chávez has done in Venezuela.

Even though the illegal referendum never took place, thanks to the intervention of Honduras Supreme Court and armed services, the "official results" were already stored in Zelaya's computers.

Honduras Attorney General is now investigating the possibility of bringing charges for fraud and falsification of documents against some members of the previous government.

Honduran authorities showed members of the press on Friday a computer with an "official" result from a voting place which showed 550 people voting, 450 in favor of Zelaya's proposal and 30 against. The others were either bank or nullified.

But as we know, no one actually voted because by the time the referendum was supposed to begin, Zelaya had already been shipped to Costa Rica.

By frauds like this, is how crooks like Chávez, Correa, Ortega and Zelaya get "elected."

And after they gain power, they use more fraud to change their countries constitution and remain in power for life.

But if we hear the OAS, the UN and our own government officials, all these crooks were "democratically elected."

If stupidity was a virus, we would have a world pandemic.

Europa Press (Spanish) I have not seen any reports in the English speaking media as of Saturday morning, even though they were present at the press conference held by Honduran authorities on Friday.

Democracy is built of fundamental principles that allow for growth and change to occur that is beneficial for the good of all the people: the right to vote for our leaders. Honduras is the latest battlefield where democracy quickly and prayerfully used Rule of Law to defeat a heavy-handed attack by would-be Dictator Mel Manuel “Mel” Zelaya. Former left-wing president, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was voted into office by the slimmest of margins (1%) and with a new vote coming up he had to move quickly to maintain power. Hugo Chavez provided him with the plan and the money needed to facilitate democratic collapse and implement a democratic transition to Communism by paying people to vote his way.

Zelaya would call for a vote known as the 4th Box, to change the constitution, eliminate term limits and give him greater power over the government. Deemed unconstitutional and unlawful by Congress and the Supreme Court, Zelaya ordered the ballots to be printed anyway, forcing the issue. Honduran printers refused to print the illegal ballots so Chavez offered printers in Venezuela, and for no extra charge the printers printed a “Yes” vote right in the box marked “Yes.” Zelaya then ordered Military General Romeo Vasquez to distribute the additional ballots to all the polling places. General Vasquez refused the order and was fired by Zelaya. Congress responded by saying he couldn’t be fired for following the law and refusing to obey an unlawful order. General Vasquez was promptly reinstated and the Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya for violating constitutional law. A Supreme Court judge accompanied the military in arresting Zelaya at his home so that his paid supporters could not start a riot. Zelaya was removed to prevent bloodshed and given the choice of what country to go to. He chose Costa Rica.

Democracy defended, Dictatorship defeated… Not so fast. As with any bad sportsman, Zelaya would not go quietly and sought ways to regain power though a misinformation campaign (again funded by Chavez) saying there was a military overthrow while also paying people to create protests denouncing the government, the Church, and the military. Paid Zelayan supporters, wearing red, took to the streets and were ordered to riot and destroy businesses, stores and fast-food companies in the capitol, all with cameras rolling. Peaceful pro-government supporters, wearing blue and white, also held very large rallies all over the country in support of government action and the military, but they received very little media attention. They prayed together, thanking God for their country and the lack of bloodshed.

Zelaya, the news reports said, tried to get back into Honduras by landing his plane in the capitol city airport, Tegucigalpa, where his paid supporters and the media were waiting to rush the gates and take back their leader. He was not allowed to land there. However, were he really interested in landing, there were three other airports he could have used but there would have been no media and supporters there and the effort would be lost.

A new election will be held in the fall where democracy will be exercised once again. Currently, President Roberto Micheletti is the Constitutional President of the Republic having been appointed by Congress. Zelaya issued an ultimatum this Monday stating that if he is not reinstated into power by the end of this week, then, “…there are other forms of actions we are already organizing for my return to the country at whatever cost.”

Supporter of Manuel Zelaya

Elvin Santos was the former Vice President, but he resigned well before any of this took place. He would have seceded Zelaya in office. Since they never replaced the Vice President, Micheletti was appointed. In the meantime Honduras is willing to stand alone against any sanctions placed upon her by Chavez, the US, or any other nation siding with Mel Zelaya.

Hondurans (over 90%) are very proud of the stance their country took to preserve democracy and thwart attempts by Castro and Chavez to infect Central American nations with Communism, and we should be too.

The Honduran people have told me again and again that what they want from the people of the United States is for us to pray for freedom and democracy … and for Honduras.

I wonder if the US, faced with such a challenge, would rise up and defend our Constitution with the same fervor as Honduras from any attempt to change it into something else?

May God bless Honduras and all nations that follow her brave example of steadfast loyalty to Truth, Democracy and the Rule of Law.

The Honduran coup that wasn't

Despite howls by organizations that should know better, the nation's president legally removed himself from office by trying to alter the Constitution. The military just helped him out the door.

By William Ratliff July 18, 2009

We have heard a lot about Honduras lately, but there is much more at issue than the nighttime removal of President Manuel Zelaya on June 28 and its aftermath. The far bigger story is the disgrace of the world's major international political and economic organizations.

The Organization of American States and its ambitious leader, Jose Miguel Insulza, took the lead in dealing with the crisis. The OAS gave the new de facto Honduran government three days to restore Zelaya or suffer suspension from the organization. Tegucigalpa responded by quitting first.

But the OAS, the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank and others were all shooting from the hip into the dark. These leaders had nothing to inform their decisions but fuzzy idealism, ideological prejudices, assorted self-interests and profound ignorance of realities on the ground in Honduras.

But that was good enough for them. Insulza rejected conversations among contending parties in favor of macho confrontation, ultimatums and polarization, to the cheers of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other Chavistas. To their great shame, every OAS member-nation went along with Insulza. The OAS is indeed the Organization of American Sheep.

The Obama administration kept a low profile while setting up talks between the two sides, mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. The talks themselves -- as well as the U.S. focus on mediation rather than just confrontation -- brought howls of rage from Chavez.

The OAS declaimed its eternal rejection of the "anti-democratic," "anti-constitutional" "military coup" by the new government. But it was Zelaya who was in the wrong. The OAS diplomats can't have it both ways -- professing their unshakable dedication to national constitutions and the rule of law even as they militantly make a hero of a country's No. 1 lawbreaker.

What didn't the OAS, the U.N. and other leaders know that before ordering Hondurans around? As Honduran lawyer Octavio Sanchez pointed out in the Christian Science Monitor, when Zelaya issued a decree ordering a referendum on changing presidential terms, he "triggered a constitutional provision that automatically removed him from office." (Google the Honduran Constitution and read it for yourself -- Article 239.) Zelaya had ousted himself, so impeachment was unnecessary.

So it was quite legal for the military to remove Zelaya, though the nighttime act gave an impression of a military coup to outsiders.

It is Zelaya, Insulza, Chavez, the U.N. and all the OAS member-states who are playing at banana republic politics, not the government in Tegucigalpa.

William Ratliff is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the Independent Institute.

Hondurans are trying to get word out by Twitter that they are receiving threatening text messages on their cell phones tonight, telling them to stay inside and not leave their homes tomorrow night.

“Now more than ever I will be the first one out the door,” Honduran Pedro Martinez told Canada Free Press tonight. Pedro Martinez is the pseudonym we gave to the young Honduran professional that Canada Free Press (CFP) walked through Twitter hookup last week.

“Tomorrow might be a bad day,” Pedro tipped off CFP on twitter. “People are infiltrating Honduras thru (sic) Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua with the intention to create chaos.”

Looks like deposed Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya, who has called for a popular insurrection in his own country so that he can be returned to power after soldiers removed him at gunpoint on June 28, is on the way back.

With the verbal cunning of good Marxists the world over and the backing of tyrant Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, this is Zelaya’s message today from the safety of Guatemala: “The Honduran people have the right to insurrection.”

“I want to tell you to not leave the streets, that is the only space that they have not taken from us,” he told a news conference alongside Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom,” (Yahoo News.com. July 15, 2009).

Meanwhile, no one in Honduras is running from Zelaya’s threats. “We are not issuing threats,” acting foreign minister Carlos Lopez said in response to Zelaya’s call for an insurrection, reminding the exiled Honduran leader that Roberto Micheletti’s government was in control and the country was at peace.

“We removed the curfew and the government has complete control of the territory.”

Problem is Pedro and tens of thousands like him, who backed Zelaya’s ouster on June 28, believe the streets and democracy belong to them.

Zelaya’s ultimatum to the interim government ordering it to relinquish power within the week and the demands for his immediate restitution has only raised the peoples’ dander.

People like Pedro expect only the worst from Zelaya.

This is a sturdy resistance that predates the July 28 bum’s rush, and one that sees Zelaya as a dictator who is giving their country and all it stands for over to “socialist rule under Chavez.”

“Long before the so-called coup d’etat, we watched as Chavez’s shiny new tractors were given like carnival candy to Honduran farmers,” Pedro told CFP in an earlier telephone call. “The tactics are the same ones used by Communists everywhere.”

“While his own people, whose children go hungry were out of work, Zelaya was swaggering under his 10-gallon cowboy hats and 100% tooled leather cowboy boots.

“We were told that big-spending Zelaya had been whooping it up in Costa Rica, where he blew his way through $80,000 in his first few days in exile.

“I was there at Tegucigalpa airport on July 6 when our interim government refused to let his plane touch down from Costa Rica. Zelaya and supporters, whose bullets killed my two countrymen, lied when they said the bullets came from the Interim Government side. Our side used rubber bullets. Zalaya supporters used real bullets on real people.”

Pedro, who speaks perfect English, says Zalaya “thugs” and “militants” have been threatening Honduran journalists. “We know what supermarket your wife uses. We know which school your little boy attends. That’s what they have been telling journalists,” Pedro says.

Tonight there’s a flurry of text messages going between Hondurans who want to keep their country a democracy “even if it means a bloodbath”.

The coming bloodbath of which they speak is more than an exaggeration.

General Romeo Vasquez, head of the Honduran Army, told AFP that Zelaya was exiled to avoid “deaths and injuries”.

Meanwhile, Pedro and his many countrymen are in defending Honduras mode: “God bless Honduras. God bless Canada and the Free World. Nobody is going to take our Freedom and Democracy away. Nobody.”

UPDATE:

Honduras Reinstates Curfew, Warns of Action

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras’ interim government warned of armed actions to return ousted President Manuel Zelaya to power and reinstated an overnight curfew it had lifted only days earlier.

Roberto Micheletti, the former congressional leader chosen by lawmakers to serve out the final six months of Zelaya’s term following the June 28 coup, said Wednesday that forces he didn’t identify “were handing out some guns” to foment rebellion. A day earlier, Zelaya said Hondurans have the right to launch an insurrection against the government.

“There are reports, I don’t know if they are real, I haven’t been officially informed, that there is a group of armed people and that Zelaya is going to enter over the Nicaraguan border this Saturday,” Micheletti said.

As if our usurper President hasn’t
been mean and nasty enough with all the new taxes and burdens he has decreed,
most likely in an illegal way, or at least until he can PROVE he is qualified to
hold that office according to the United States Constitution, he has just one-upped
himself in nastiness.

Some weeks ago a U. S.
Army Reserve Major named Stefan Cook received orders to be deployed overseas to
Afghanistan. The Major, a good man living in Florida and working for a
civilian employer named Simtech, Inc., had personal questions about the
eligiblity of Barack Obama to hold the Office of President of the United States
as he has not proved his status as a natural born American, a Constitutional
requirement.

For that reason, Major Stefan Cook refused to
honor the order, which according to military tradition emanated from the military Commander in Chief, in theory if not in
fact. The military issued charges against Cook that
would result in court martial proceedings and possibly result in imprisonment,
fine and a less than honorable discharge from the service.

Major Cook hired an Attorney named Orly Taitz who has
pending other charges against Barack Obama for usurpation of the Office of the
President as being ineligible due to not being a natural born citizen of the
United States of America.

Maj.
Cook filed the suit July 8 in federal court here asking for conscientious
objector status and a preliminary injunction based upon his belief that Barack
Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore
ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces. But before
the issue got to court, Cook’s orders to deploy to Afghanistan were revoked. Lt. Col. Maria Quon, U.S.
Army Public Affairs.

According to a July 15, 2009
report from Lily Gordon, Ledger-Enquirer, the defense against the military’s
charges on Major Cook was apparently too much for both the
military and the usurping President to counter and incredibly, the
charges and the deployment orders were rescinded and the deployment of Major
Cook to Afghanistan was canceled.

Another report on July 15, 2009 by Red Steel, Auburn Journal,
says that the Department of Defense has compelled Major Cook’s private employer,
Simtech, Inc. to fire the U.S. Army Reserve major from his civilian job.
Simtech Inc., is a private company contracted by the Department of Defense; the
federal agency has compelled the termination of Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook.

How is that for being the big bully on the block? I can only hope that
someone can also get that order reversed. Imagine getting fired for seeking the
truth? I am convinced that this is the single most disgusting Administration
ever in the history of the United States with the most sickening person
masquerading as our President.

This Army Major put his career in
jeopardy to take this action and he was facing military court martial, possible
imprisonment, fines and loss of time served as well as a Dishonorable Discharge;
actions which would have effectively destroyed the rest of his life. Bravery
and love for country to do something that honorable is well beyond courageous;
it borders on being qualified for a citation for eternal gratitude from every
American citizen.

When the heavy hand of tyranny strikes out at innocent
people like Major Cook who is a good and honest American serving his country in
volunteer military service, legitimately seeking information on what should be
shown publicly, who will he hammer next?

A new television ad by one of the nation's
largest political action committees - the Our Country Deserves Better PAC - has
Barack Obama, Harry Reid & Nancy Pelosi furious - and you can help make sure
this ad is seen by millions of Americans:

Yahoo is reporting that Obama is in default in Keyes v. Obama and the case will progress without hindrance this time?

In what ultimately could prove to be a turning point in the legal challenges to Barack Obama's eligibility to be president, a federal judge in California has planned a hearing on the merits of a federal court case raising those questions.

The hearing was for a default order against Obama, because although notified of the action, Obama's attorneys did not make an appearance at the first hearing.

The judge, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, said, that as a former Marine, he recognizes the importance of having a constitutionally qualified president.

While no attorneys appeared on Obama's behalf, several members of the U.S. Attorney's office in California were in attendance, and sought to intervene on behalf of Obama over his actions before becoming president. The judge ordered them to accept service of the lawsuit immediately and then continued the case to an unannounced date.

At the hearing today at the Federal Court building in Santa Ana, Judge Carter said the following:

1. There will be a trial.2. It will be heard on the merits.3. Nothing will be dismissed on procedural issues.4. The trial will be expeditious, and the judge pledged to give case priority.5. Being a former Marine he realizes the importance of having a Constitutionally qualified POTUS/CINC.6. Judge stated that if Obama isn't Constitutionally qualified he needs to leave the White House.

The DOJ will be involved with the case also.... I wasn't clear if they would be trying to get to the truth or they would just be blindly representing Obama.

Orly will be adding members of the military from California as plaintiffs also.

This is from what my interpretation of our conversation.

Orly, asked me to disseminate this information out for her, she will be doing a posting later after she gets some sleep.

Please say a prayer of protection for Orly, her family, and Judge Carter. Please also pray that the truth will come to light regarding Obama and justice will be done.

A federal judge this morning dismissed the suit filed here by a U.S. Army reservist who says he shouldn't have to go to Afghanistan because he believes Barack Obama was never eligible to be president.

Judge Clay Land sided with the defense, which claimed in its response to Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook's suit, filed July 8 with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, that Cook’s suit is “moot” in that he already has been told he doesn’t have to go to Afghanistan, so the relief he is seeking has been granted.

"Federal court only has authority of actual cases and controversies," Land said. "The entire action is dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction."

The Department of Defense has allegedly
compelled a private employer to fire a U.S. Army Reserve major from his civilian job after he
had his military deployment orders revoked for arguing he should not be required to serve
under a president who has not proven his eligibility for office.

, an agency of the Department of Defense, the
federal government has compelled the termination of Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook.

Cook's attorney, Orly Taitz, wrote in her
blog that Simtech CEO Larry Grice said he would try to find another position
within the company for Cook, but nothing is currently available.

The Department of Defense does contracting
in the general field of information technology/systems integration, at which
Cook, a senior systems engineer and architect, was employed until taking a military leave of
absence on July 10 in preparation for his deployment to Afghanistan.

"Grice told plaintiff, in essence, that
the situation had become 'nutty and crazy,' and that plaintiff would no longer
be able to work at his old position," Taitz wrote.

Grice made clear that it was Defense
Security Services that had compelled Simtech to fire Cook, Taitz wrote.

According to the report, Grice told Cook
"there was some gossip that 'people were disappointed in' the plaintiff because
they thought he was manipulating his deployment orders to create a platform for
political purposes."

The Simtech CEO then discussed Cook's
expectation of final paychecks, without any severance pay, and wished the
soldier well.

Messages left with Grice's office had not
been returned at the time of this report.

"A federal agency (such as the Department
of Defense, acting through the Defense Security Services Agency) clearly
violates the Whistleblower Protection Act if it takes or fails to take (or
threatens to take or fail to take) a personnel action with respect to any
employee or applicant because of any disclosure of information by the employee
or applicant that he or she reasonably believes evidences a violation of a law,
rule or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; an abuse of
authority; or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety,"
Taitz wrote.

"What has happened in the present case of
Stefan Frederick Cook is that a federal agency appears to have taken action
against Stefan Frederick Cook's private employer, Simtech, Inc., which is a
closely held corporation owned and operated by members of a single family, who
are as much victims of the Department of Defense's heavy-handed interference
with plaintiff Cook's private-sector employment as is plaintiff Cook himself."

"We won! We won before we even arrived,"
she said with excitement. "It means that the military has nothing to show for
Obama. It means that the military has directly responded by saying Obama is
illegitimate – and they cannot fight it. Therefore, they are revoking the
order!"

She continued, "They just said, 'Order
revoked.' No explanation. No reasons – just revoked."

A hearing on the questions raised by Maj.
Stefan Frederick Cook, an engineer who told WND he wants to serve his country in
Afghanistan, is still scheduled for July 16 at 9:30 a.m.

Tuesday, Jul. 14, 2009

Soldier balks at deploying; says Obama isn’t president

Says he shouldn’t have to go to Afghanistan because Obama is not a U.S. citizen

U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, set to deploy to Afghanistan, says he shouldn’t have to go.

His reason?

Barack Obama was never eligible to be president because he wasn’t born in the United States.

Actually, Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, two years after it became a state.

Cook’s lawyer, Orly Taitz, who has also challenged the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency in other courts, filed a request last week in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order and status as a conscientious objector for his client.

In the 20-page document — filed July 8 with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia — the California-based Taitz asks the court to consider granting his client’s request based upon Cook’s belief that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Cook further states he “would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command. ... simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties.”

Cook, a reservist, received the orders mobilizing him to active duty on June 9.

According to this document, which accompanies Cook’s July 8 application for a temporary restraining order, he has been ordered to report to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday. From there, the Florida resident would go to Fort Benning before deploying overseas.

A hearing to discuss Cook’s requests will take place in federal court here Thursday at 9:30 a.m.

AP SHOULD INVESTIGATE BEFORE PUBLISH A LIE ABOUT HONDURANS BATTLE FOR FREEDOM.

ARMY HAD RUBBER BULLETS, AND THE MAN WAS KILLED NOT WITH RUBBER BULLETS.

Please tell your Associated Press writers Freddy Cuevas, Marcos Aleman and Esteban Felix in Tegucigalpa, Matthew Lee in Washington and Theresa Bradley in Mexico City contributed to this report, investigate more or at list publish both sides.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - Supporters of ousted President Manuel Zelaya vowed Monday to widen protests and block trade nationwide as the deposed leader headed to Washington for a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Thousands of Zelaya supporters have demonstrated since his overthrow eight days ago, including 2,000 who rallied peacefully Monday near the presidential palace. Anger increased following the death of a teenager shot by soldiers Sunday as a crowd tried to break through an airport fence where a plane carrying Zelaya was prevented from landing.

HONDURAS AND CHAVEZ:WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW, WHAT THE CENTRALIZED MEDIA IS NOT TELLING YOU

The "coup" in the Central American nation of Honduras is the first major blow to the Marxist expansion sponsored by Hugo Chavez, but the American people are to a great extent being kept in the dark by the centralized news media.

The Associated Press, upon which most news outlets in the United States depend, appears to be slanting its reporting to support the pro-Chavez version of events in Honduras.

The AP tells us that much of the world has condemned the deposing of Manuel Zelaya. We also are told that Hugo Chavez, president of oil-rich Venezuela, has vowed to remove the new president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, and that U.S. president Barack Obama has called the Micheletti government "illegal."

Chavez stated that "If the oligarchies break the rules of the game...the people have the right to resistance and combat...we are with them."

AP reports say little about the ardent support Chavez is giving the deposed Zelaya, and scant attention is given to those who are fearful of Chavez's involvement in the internal politics of Honduras.

Chavez's political presence in Honduras has entered even into the spiritual realm. Bishop Darwin Andino, the Catholic auxiliary bishop of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, observed that, "the hand of the Venezuelan Hugo Chavez" was involved in his nation's internal affairs, according to France's AFP news agency. Bishop Andino stated that Honduras was resisting "chavismo," the promotion of Chavez and his revolution.

Defending his position as the new Honduran president, Micheletti stated that 12 "advisors" had arrived in his country from Venezuela and the regime in neighboring Nicaragua, now dominated by the overtly Marxist Daniel Ortega. A fact yet to be reported by the AP.

These "advisors" are seen as helping to guide the building of a pro-Chavez dictatorship in Honduras, following the same pattern as has already occurred in Bolivia under Evo Morales and in Ecuador under Raphael Correa. An illegal "referendum" called by Zelaya shortly before his ouster fit into the model used by Chavez, Morales, and Correa to ensure unlimited terms in office.

Modern governments often limit presidential terms in an attempt to check the rise of a popular dictatorship. The United States has similarly amended its constitution to avoid presidential abuse of power. Pro-Chavez regimes seek to "reform" their nations' constitutions to remove this protective provision and obtain the "right" to remain in office permanently.

Zelaya had also committed Honduras to membership in an organization founded by Chavez, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, sometimes referred to by its Spanish acronym, ALBA, which was founded to promote Chavez's neo-communist revolution, "21st Century Socialism."

Following another pattern of Chavez and his allies, Zelaya sought to control media reporting by demanding that his government have at least two hours of program time per day to present its views to the nation.

The AP has neglected to inform its readers about these and other factors which play a vital part in the Honduran story.

Chavez's threats against the new Honduran government should be taken seriously.

The sale of sophisticated small arms, advanced jet fighters, and battle tanks by Russia to Venezuela has made the Chavez regime a significant regional power.

Chavez has close ties with the most important guerrilla group in the region, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombian, a Marxist narco-terror army known by the Spanish acronym, FARC. Although recently battered by Colombian military, the FARC remains a potent force in Colombia and still retains a significant presence throughout much of the Latin American region.

Operating from Nicaragua, FARC fighters could easily cross the border into Honduras and inflict a great amount of suffering and death.

President Micheletti and his supporters did, as Chavez emotionally declared, "break the rules," but only in the sense of opposing an abuse of power and "chavismo."

How long Micheletti can withstand the assaults from the neo-communist elites remains uncertain, but a brave stand has been taken against Marxist tyranny, and the American people should have accurate knowledge about it.

UnoAmerica recognized the new Honduran government. Who and what does UnoAmerica represent?

UnoAmerica is an Alliance of Latin-American Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), created to defend democracy and freedom, both currently in danger in our continent. We decided to recognize the new Honduran government because the ousting of President Manuel Zelaya was actually an impeachment. Zelaya wanted to change the Constitution, without the approval of the Supreme Court and the Congress, in order to stay illegally in power. As in all democratic governments, there are three branches of power in Honduras. In this case, the Executive wanted to stage a coup against the Constitution, and the other two powers (Legislative and Judiciary) did not let that happen. It is very simple.

Why is the world allied against the new government?

In part, because of disinformation, and in part, because Hugo Chavez and his allies have been conducting a black propaganda operation against the new government, in order to defend their friend Zelaya. Unfortunately, some authorities in the US have fallen for that version, without really knowing what went on.

Why is Obama siding with Chavez and Castro on this matter?

I believe that, on the one hand, Obama is beginning to show his socialist tendencies, which were denounced during the American presidential campaign. On the other hand, Obama is letting himself be influenced by several presidents of Latin America, particularly Lula of Brazil, who is the real power behind the Sao Paulo Forum.

Can Honduras be saved from Chavez?

I think it can, but it requires the participation of all citizens, not only of Latin America, but of the US as well. Honduras is facing tremendous pressures, and will not be able to bear them without the help of the world public opinion. Every article, every interview, in favor of the Honduran democracy helps to defend their institutions against Chavez' assault.

What has happened to the Organization of American States?

Unfortunately, 15 presidents of Latin America belong to the Sao Paulo Forum, and seven other governments (especially from the Caribbean islands, who are dependent on Chavez' oil shipments) do as well. We could say, then, that 22 of 34 of the votes in the OAS are controlled by Chavez. Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the OAS, himself belongs to the Chilean Socialist Party, which is a member of the Sao Paulo Forum.

Some of the pro-Zelaya protesters in Honduras have been seen with symbols of Che Guevara. What does that tell you? Why the fascination with Che?

The Sao Paulo Forum has done a lot of propaganda in favor of Che and Fidel Castro. It is now trying to change the history books in order to modify our traditional conservative values and create instead a new set of principles based on socialism. Many youngsters are victims of that campaign.

What is your opinion about the negotiations that have been announced between the Honduran government and Zelaya?

I welcome any negotiations that will serve to prevent violent confrontations. And I think it's the best way to find a durable solution to the Honduran crisis. But it's fair to say that there are not two factions in Hondurans, but just one, because the overwhelming majority of the Honduran population supports the new government. The other "faction" is composed of paid agitators financed by Chavez and led by foreigners, most of them Nicaraguans linked to the government of Ortega.

What center-right or pro-American governments exist in Latin America today?

I would say only four: Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Panama. Don't be fooled by Lula; he is with Fidel Castro and with Chavez, but he is so hypocritical that he will claim to be a friend of the US.

How much freedom is left in Venezuela?

There is very little room left for freedom and democracy in Venezuela. This is a "third generation" dictatorship; not so cruel and obvious as Fidel Castro's, but just as evil. There are elections, but rigged. There is certain freedom of press, but the media is threatened with closure if it "crosses the line." Not all Chavez' adversaries are persecuted, just some, but enough to spread fear among the rest. All three branches of power are controlled by Chavez. The Constitution has been rewritten to allow Chavez to stay in power indefinitely. Venezuelan petrodollars are used to export his Marxist revolution throughout Latin America. And the government is closely related with Colombian narco-terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists.

Can freedom be saved in Venezuela?

Yes, but not through elections, because, as I mentioned before, they are rigged. Only a process similar to that of Honduras can rescue democracy and freedom in Venezuela. That's why Chavez is so interested in crushing the new Honduran government. He does not want such an example spread to his own country.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of freedom in Latin America?

I am very optimistic, but it will be a very complicated and traumatic outcome, which many won't understand. Exactly as what is happening in Honduras. I think it would be useful for the American population to read again their own Declaration of Independence, especially the part about the rights of the people to be free from tyrants. This is exactly what Hondurans are doing today, and most probably what Venezuelans will do in the near future.

It is a shame that President Obama is aligning himself with the allies of Chavez and Ahmadinejad to crush a democratic process in Honduras. I ask myself: Will he really be conscious of the tremendous damage he is inflicting to democracy and freedom in our continent? Does he really know the danger he is posing to the national security of the United States?

Cliff Kincaid, a veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff concentrated in journalism and communications at the University of Toledo, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

UnoAmerica and the author of The Foro de Sao Paulo: A Threat to Freedom in Latin America. Pena Esclusa, a former Venezuelan presidential candidate and a prominent critic of the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela, has been spearheading opposition to the Sao Paulo Forum, a coalition of communist and leftist parties and terrorist movements in Latin America. With the end of the Cold War in 1989, it was believed by many that communism was on the wane. However, with Fidel Castro isolated in Cuba, he reached out to Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva of the Worker's Party of Brazil, who would later become President of Brazil. An event was hosted in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1990, the seat of Lula's power, bringing together what came to be known as the Sao Paulo Forum.

Online news sites such as United Press International or Snopes.com anytime before Tuesday evening, July 7, 2009, contained statements that Barack Obama was born at the Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

After World Net Daily, posted articles about a letter, posted by the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, in which Obama claims he was born thereUPI and Snopes, and possibly other sites, have gone back and changed their articles, even though the letter may in fact, be a fake.

Neil Abercrombie read the "letter", at the 100 year celebration of the Hospital, but what he read, differed from what the posted image stated.

THIS REPORT WAS AIRED THREE HOURS AGO BY TELEMUNDO, NO ONE IN THE ENGLISH MEDIA HAVE PUBLISHED ANYTHING ABOUT THIS REPORT ON THE DRUG CONNECTION . THE REPORT MENTION A TRIP WITH A FAMOUS MEXICAN DRUG DEALER WITH ZELAYA'S SON.

.

WILL THE UN, OAS OR EVEN HILARY CLINTON OR OBAMA DO SOMETHING ABOUT?? TELEMUNDO BROADCASTED AT 6.30 PM TODAY, BUT I HEARD SEVCEC IN HONDURAN RADIO AMERICA THAT WILL HAVE MORE INFORMATION IN THE FUTURE. SEE THE VIDEO IT'S IN SPANISH.

July 10 (Bloomberg) -- The legality of :Manuel Zelaya’s ouster as president of Honduras is dividing Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. at the same time that it is polarizing Hondurans.

Democratic President :Barack Obama, a day after Zelaya was physically whisked out of power June 28 by the military, called the ouster illegal. Secretary of State :Hillary Clinton met with Zelaya in Washington July 7 and announced negotiations that could facilitate his return.

Clinton refused to meet with a delegation of the Honduran National Congress and the private sector, which is backing :Roberto Micheletti, who was installed as the nation’s new president upon Zelaya’s ouster, ignoring an appeal by 17 Republican U.S. senators for her to do so.

Instead, the delegation -- which has hired a top Washington lawyer, Lanny Davis, to help with its public relations -- found a warm reception among Republicans on Capitol Hill including Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Florida Republican and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“There is a growing consensus that what took place in Honduras on June 28 was a legal process in response to Mr. Zelaya’s repeated constitutional violations and breaches of the rule of law,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement.

Term-Limit Referendum

Zelaya’s opponents accused him of ignoring court rulings and seeking to retain power by changing the constitution through a referendum on term limits.

The delegation, which included a former Honduran ambassador to the U.S., a former secretary of state and a current congressman, held a press conference this week at the National Press Club and a press conference call in Washington arranged by Davis’s firm, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

Adolfo Franco, a former assistant administrator for Latin America at the U.S. Agency for International Development and a backer of Republican presidential nominee ,John McCain during his presidential run, said if Zelaya returned to Honduras he would find a way to extend his rule.

“He’d do everything to perpetuate himself in power,” Franco said at a forum sponsored by the Council of the Americas in Washington yesterday. “I don’t think he’s eager to return to power for three or four months.”

Franco said Clinton, by refusing to meet the delegation opposed to Zelaya, demonstrated a lack of “understanding of the situation” in Latin America and Honduras.

Today, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee meets to discuss the U.S. response to the situation in Honduras.

What happened in Honduras on June 28 was not a military coup. It was the constitutional removal of a president who abused his powers and tried to subvert the country's democratic institutions in order to stay in office.

The extent to which this episode has been misreported is truly remarkable. Here are a few of the incontrovertible facts.

First of all, the decision to remove President Manuel Zelaya from office was not undertaken by the military. It was the country's Supreme Court that unanimously ordered the army on June 26 to arrest the president on the charges of "treason, abuse of power and usurpation of duties."

The Honduran constitution does not establish an impeachment process by Congress. However, in 2003 the constitution was amended, giving the Supreme Court, and not Congress, the duty to handle the processes initiated against "the highest ranking officials of the State." This amendment also eliminated the benefit of immunity that high-ranking officials had enjoyed until then. Thus, the president is subject to prosecution--just like any other citizen.

It is also important to note that after Zelaya's ouster, the army didn't seize or retain power. The Honduran Congress, as specified by the constitution, promptly swore in the speaker of Congress as the new president. Consequently, power stayed in civilian hands. The army merely enforced a court ruling, as provided for in the constitution.

The Honduran constitution is atypical in Latin American because of its repeated emphasis on presidential term limits. Due to the country's authoritarian past, when both civilian and military dictatorships were the rule, the Honduran constitution bans any sort of presidential re-election.

The document is quite clear about this: Article 4 states that attempts to violate the alternation in the office of the presidency constitute "treason." Article 42.5 even says that any person who incites, promotes or supports presidential re-election will lose his or her citizenship.

And Article 239 says that any person who has held the office of the presidency cannot be president or vice president again. Furthermore, it states that the officeholder "that violates this provision or proposes its reform, as well as those who support such a violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years."

I added the italics for emphasis. Note the use of the word "immediately."

Also, the Honduran constitution stipulates that the only mechanism through which it can be amended is by two separate votes in Congress by absolute majority (two-thirds). However, Article 375 states that under no circumstance can the constitution be amended to allow for presidential re-election.

Zelaya was promoting a referendum on the need for a new constitution that would open the door to his re-election. The vote, which was scheduled the day of his ouster, had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court and the Electoral Tribunal, and condemned by the Honduran Congress and attorney general.

Since late May, the office of the attorney general had been pressing a case against the president for his efforts to call a referendum. The Supreme Court notified the president several times that his actions were out of order. Zelaya ignored those calls.

Instead, he ordered the Honduran armed forces to provide logistical assistance in the execution of his illegal referendum. The army chief, complying with the Supreme Court ruling, refused to obey the order. Zelaya sacked him.

The Electoral Tribunal ordered the seizure of the ballots and other electoral materials that were going to be used for the vote. Zelaya then personally led a mob that stormed the air force base where those electoral materials were being held in order to retrieve them.

Given Zelaya's repeated and deliberate actions against the constitution and the rule of law, on June 25 the attorney general filed an injunction with the Supreme Court asking for his arrest. The next day, the Court unanimously issued an arrest warrant and ordered the army to enforce it.

However, something went wrong. Instead of arresting him, the army disobeyed the terms of the arrest warrant by expelling Zelaya from the country. That was a clear violation the constitution; Article 102 protects a citizen from being expatriated.

The army claims it did so in order to avoid clashes with Zelaya's supporters, who might have tried to storm the facilities where he'd be held. That could have resulted in bloodshed and a terrible loss of lives.

But the army acted illegally, and the attorney general's office has already filed an investigation of the military officers' decision to expel Zelaya. The army has stated that they will comply with any court ruling in this case.

President Obama has declared that this "coup" was illegal. But if he had read the Honduran constitution--or even been provided with a brief analysis of the document's details--it seems unlikely he could maintain such a firm conclusion.

Juan Carlos Hidalgo is the project coordinator for Latin America at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

THE FOUNDATION

"My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom." --George Washington

Zelaya tried to usurp Honduras' constitution - no wonder Obama and the Castros support him

LIBERTY

"Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback [last week] when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution. It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking. But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. ...[T]he Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground. ... [Hillary Clinton] accused Honduras of violating 'the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter' and said it 'should be condemned by all.' Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government. Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. ... The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and [OAS Secretary General José Miguel] Insulza expose their true colors." --columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady

RE: THE LEFT

"Help me out here. President Obama immediately 'meddles' in the affairs of Honduras, denouncing a military coup, the intent of which is to preserve the country's constitution, but when it comes to Iran's fraudulent election and the violent repression of demonstrators who wanted their votes counted, the president initially vacillates and equivocates. Are we expected to accept this as a consistent foreign policy? Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was reluctant to call the removal of President Manuel Zelaya a coup, if for no other reason than it would stop U.S. aid flowing to the impoverished Central American nation. The fingerprints (or in this case the boot prints) of the Castro brothers, Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua are all over this. If one is known by the company one keeps, the specter of the Castros and their protégé dictators joining President Obama in denouncing the Honduran military coup is not reassuring. Clearly Zelaya was the choice of the dictators to help spread 'revolution' to America's back door. ... The threat by Chavez to send his troops into Honduras ought to be another signal to the Obama administration that thugs can't be made nice by talking to them. So far, the world's tyrants have been unresponsive to Obama's offer of a new start. ... They are getting the message, but it's a different one than President Obama hoped to send. The message is that Obama is weak and can be had. It is one thing for a president to be liked, but in a dangerous world with dictators who have, or wish to acquire, nuclear weapons and by these and other means destroy the United States, it is better that an American president be feared." --columnist Cal Thomas

OPINION IN BRIEF

"[I]s the U.S. at least consistent in its promises not to meddle? Not all the time. When Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in Israel, the Obama administration made its distaste clear. It also has tried to find ways to isolate Hamid Karzai's elected government in Afghanistan -- and was initially not happy about the prospects of its re-election. Most recently, the U.S. condemned the Honduran military's arrest of President Manuel Zelaya. The nation's supreme court had found his efforts to extend his presidential tenure in violation of its constitution, once Zelaya tried to finesse an illegal third term. In other words, the U.S. pressures other nations as it pleases -- though strangely now more to lean on friends than to criticize rivals and enemies. In contrast, had President Obama voiced early, consistent and sharp criticism of the Iranian crackdown, the theocracy would have worried that the president's stature could have galvanized global boycotts and embargos to isolate the theocracy and aid the dissidents. And the reformers in the streets could have become even more confident with a trademark Obama 'hope and change' endorsement. Internal democratic change in Iran is the only peaceful solution to stopping an Iranian bomb, three decades of Iranian-sponsored terrorism and a Middle East arms race. When thousands risked their lives for a better Iran, a better Middle East and a better world, we, the land of the free, simply were not with them." --Hoover Institution historian Victor Davis Hanson

THE GIPPER

"Ludwig Von Mises, that great economist, once noted: 'People must fight for something they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil.' Well, the conservative movement remains in the ascendancy because we have a bold, forward-looking agenda. No longer can it be said that conservatives are just anti-Communist. We are, and proudly so, but we are also the keepers of the flame of liberty. And as such, we believe that America should be a source of support, both moral and material, for all those on God's Earth who struggle for freedom. Our cause is their cause, whether it be in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, or Angola. When I came back from Iceland I said -- and I meant it -- American foreign policy is not simply focused on the prevention of war but the expansion of freedom. Modern conservatism is an active, not a reactive philosophy. It's not just in opposition to those vices that debase character and community, but affirms values that are at the heart of civilization." --Ronald Reagan

FOR THE RECORD

"Here's how to get a dubious bill into law, or at least past the U.S. House of Representatives, which of late has deserved to be called the lower chamber: -- First, make the bill long. Very long. So long no one may actually read it, supporters or opponents. Introduce a 310-page horse-choker of an amendment at 3 in the morning on the day of the roll-call vote. So it can't be examined too closely or too long. Only after the bill passes may its true costs emerge. ... -- Make sure that the bill itself, which was already 1,200 pages long before this super-sized amendment was added, surpasseth all understanding. (Which may be the only thing it has in common with the peace of God.) ... -- Insert all kinds of exceptions into the bill so those special interests that stand to benefit by them -- whether regional, economic or ideological -- will join the stampede. -- Coat the bill and the campaign for it with high-sounding sloganspeak, if not hysteria. Warn that The End Is Near unless this bill is passed, at least if you consider the year 2100 near. ... -- If necessary, change the subject at the last minute. Say, from climate change to creating jobs. And, hesto presto, though the vote may be close (219 to 212), a confusing bill can be on its way to becoming even more confusing law. Which is just what happened the other day in the U.S. House of Representatives. ... -- Forget the actual content of the bill, since few if any can understand it anyway. Instead, just recite talking points. It's a lot easier than actually thinking. ... Whoever said you never want to see sausage made or laws passed did a grave injustice to sausage-makers, who are surely engaged in a much more wholesome enterprise." --Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editor Paul Greenberg

INSIGHT

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. ... We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end." --English author George Orwell (1903-1950)

GOVERNMENT

"Why did the founders of our nation give us the Bill of Rights? The answer is easy. They knew Congress could not be trusted with our God-given rights. Think about it. Why in the world would they have written the First Amendment prohibiting Congress from enacting any law that abridges freedom of speech and the press? The answer is that in the absence of such a limitation Congress would abridge free speech and free press. That same distrust of Congress explains the other amendments found in our Bill of Rights protecting rights such as our rights to property, fair trial and to bear arms. The Bill of Rights should serve as a constant reminder of the deep distrust that our founders had of government. They knew that some government was necessary but they rightfully saw government as the enemy of the people and they sought to limit government and provide us with protections." --George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams

POLITICAL FUTURES

"[Al] Franken is an admitted clown. As such, he will be the only admitted clown in the United States Senate, though he will be seated with such clownish figures as Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Harry Reid. ... Upon hearing of the [Minnesota Supreme] court's decision, Franken joked that he was 'thrilled and honored by the faith that Minnesotans have placed in' him. That is not a very funny joke, but Franken is not funny. By 'Minnesotans,' he probably is attempting irony in referring to his supporters on vote canvassing boards in several left-leaning counties, who turned up a sufficient number of thitherto-uncounted votes to give him the edge. In the Nov. 4 election, Coleman won by 725 votes. After a recount, he still won by 215. Then Franken's 'Minnesotans' got busy canvassing. They demanded that votes once disqualified in their counties be counted. They found thousands of absentee ballots previously rejected for such indelicacies as fabricated addresses. Coleman cried foul and asked that one statewide standard be applied to all recounts. However, he got nowhere with this plea for equal protection of the law, and in the meantime, Franken's larcenous operatives picked up 1,350 more absentee votes, some bearing the names of pop singers. Ultimately, Franken's team managed a 312-vote victory from the 2.9 million votes cast. The Wall Street Journal was not alone in its judgment that 'Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election.'" --columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell

CULTURE

"The surrealism of celebrity pop culture erupts when a major celebrity dies. The sudden, mysterious death of Michael Jackson caused a near-total eclipse of the real news. The cable-news channels blurred into 24-7 wailing walls for the so-called 'King of Pop.' Television ratings surged with a big ka-ching. So much for the 'news' business. On Friday, for example, just 24 hours after the death news broke, anchors like NBC's Brian Williams fit the 'news' of Congress and recession and Iran into a neat thimble of snippets so they could devote most of the newscast to continued mourning of the man with the glittery glove. But what, exactly, is it that Michael Jackson brought to America that was so essential? An alien arriving from space would find him celebrated for dressing in shiny socks and dancing the 'moonwalk.' His music broke sales records and sets dance floors hopping, and his videos made people say 'I want my MTV.' But all this happened a long time ago, when MTV was a music channel. That is not how Michael Jackson dominated the pop-culture news scene for the past 15 years or so. What about Michael Jackson, the man? Was he, in the end, a good man? It seemed no one asked. Everyone wanted to celebrate the mystique of Jackson, but no one was comfortable focusing on the real Michael Jackson.... The coverage was an ocean wide -- and an inch deep." --Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

"Independence Day -- it stirs my mind. I am thankful for the birth of our wonderful nation and the men and women who brought it into being. But I am saddened this Independence Day because our freedoms are being taken away as we stray into fascism. I've been a God-fearing, law-abiding citizen for as long as I can remember. It appears, however, that we are fast becoming, if not already, a nation that is no longer based on the rule of law. So at what point does civil disobedience become the right thing, again? Perhaps it's time for us to return to our roots in their purest form." --Arab, Alabama

"For a long time, Honduras has been seen by the eyes of the international community as a small, impoverished country that survives on the handouts of the economic powers. To a certain extent this is true. We do depend on U.S. and European economies. We have no oil. We do not produce goods, and we do not export technology. Our main income comes from tourism. As of this moment, our country faces a challenge that may change our history for years or even decades to come. We have two choices. We can choose to bow our heads, bend our knees, be silent and let ex-president Zelaya come back to the presidential seat, and fall further down the spiral on which he has led us so far. We can let him take power and become another stronghold for Chavez's led socialism. We can choose to let Zelaya become one more dictator in the same fashion as Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega, Rafael Correa, and the masterminds behind this all -- Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Our second choice is to take a stand. What we did was to defend and uphold our constitution. We said no to tyranny. That was our choice. We chose to live in freedom. To President Obama, to the UN, to the OAS, to the European Union, to The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund, to the world, we say: We are a free, sovereign and independent country, and we choose to take a stand. We take a stand, even if we have to stand alone." --Tegucigalpa, Honduas

"Regarding the excitement in Honduras -- talk about support and defend. Perhaps someday our Constitution will be defended with equal fervor from all enemies domestic." --Yuma, Arizona

THE LAST WORD

"Capitalists don't view profits as evil or the product of greed. Their opponents -- call them Marxists, fascists, socialists, radical liberals or whatever -- do. Which brings us ... to Barack Obama. Both his father, Barack Obama Sr., and his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, were communists. His church of choice was one of black liberation theology, whose Marxist roots are inarguable. He associated with far leftists on the 'organizing' streets of Chicago, including Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Mentorship and associations are one thing, but what have Obama's words and actions revealed about his attitudes toward labor, capital, profits and government control of business and industry? Well, he said that he would raise capital gains tax rates, even if it reduced revenues, as a matter of fairness. It's only fair to make everyone poorer if you believe profits are inherently evil. He told Joe the Plumber he wants to spread the wealth around. He talked about confiscating Exxon Mobil's profits and giving them to consumers, saying 'they are not going to give up those profits easily.' He called Chrysler creditors 'speculators' and castigated them for refusing to accept his extortionist reorganization plan. He berated Wall Street for making profits, saying 'now is not (the) time' for them to 'rake in profits.' He and his wife even railed against the pursuit of profit in their respective commencement addresses. He abused the power of his office to steal money from GM and Chrysler shareholders and transfer it to the proletariat, I mean, the United Auto Workers. He redistributed taxpayer money from those who have paid their mortgages to those who have not. He is desperately trying to spread the misery and impoverish businesses and individuals through his cap and tax plan, which no proponent of economic growth and prosperity would consider supporting. And in addition to gobbling up other businesses and industries, he is trying to nationalize medicine -- to siphon off the evil surplus value charged by doctors and insurance companies -- on the flawed Marxist theory that he can reduce costs overall, when the reason health care costs have already skyrocketed is that market forces have been suppressed in the industry. You don't have to call him a Marxist, but at least understand where his heart is." --columnist David Limbaugh

(Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)

I continue to receive messages from Honduran citizens upset at the international media for their distorted coverage of the situation in the Central American country. The people support the ouster of Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, who is considered a puppet of Venezuelan Communist ruler Hugo Chavez. They are mystified that an American president would want to return this Chavez puppet to power in Honduras.

One Honduran wrote: "The recent action taken by our Congress is highly supported by several organizations in support of peace and democracy: the State General Attorney, the Supreme Court, the Armed Forces, the private organizations and especially many young people. Mr. Zelaya broke the law on several occasions even after the Supreme Court stated that it was illegal. He had no respect for our laws and our Constitution.

"It's not a new fact to the international media what are Chavez intentions over Central and South America. And we in Honduras don't want that. We don't want to go back to socialism or communism. We still believe very strongly in our democracy and very strongly in our freedom...We should be an example to Central American countries as well as South American countries who have not yet been influenced by Chavez.

"May God bless our small but courageous country. And I hope the international media investigate very deeply. Send your people here and interview people from Congress and Supreme Court. Thank you again for reading our side of the story. We want a democracy, peace, freedom, and a president who doesn't believe he is above the law.

"Many people don't know where Honduras is, but after this, they shall remember that Honduras said no to socialism and communism.

"I'd also like to say that I am shocked by Mr. Obama's comments. Doesn't he know Mr. Zelaya is allied with Chavez? Doesn't he know that Mr. Zelaya wants to do in Honduras what Chavez did in Venezuela, Morales has done in Bolivia, Correa has done in Ecuador, Ortega in Nicaragua, as well as what Castro has done in Cuba?"

Another wrote:

"As you already know we are living in a horrible situation in our country and feel very disappointed and frustrated because we don't have the support of the international community.

"How is it possible that other governments support a liar, a corrupt man, a 'Chavez wannabe,' as he is called in some articles, who also has strong links to the drug dealing business?

"It's amazing. They have made him a martyr. We keep writing and writing and thankfully some people have responded. We now see articles in the Washington Post, Miami Herald, New York Post, Wall Street Journal to name a few, in favor or our actions and understanding it wasn't a coup. And to tell you the truth, they should have done this before! He was out of control.

"I'm asking you, what more can we do? How can we get more people to believe that what we did was the right thing? Have you seen his speeches? Do you notice how incoherent he is? Do you see how he lies? For us it is so obvious, and that is what I wonder... how is it possible that people so well-prepared, so educated like the people in the U.N. and the U.S. government believe him? How come they are now on the same side of Hugo Chavez? Hugo Chavez talking about democracy? It's unbelievable. And it hurts.

"I love Honduras and it hurts to see that we are alone. It hurts because we have witnessed how he has stolen, abused his power and how he has created a huge war between the Hondurans. By paying poor people and promising them false things, he does have their support. He speaks to them about God. It's amazing and sad. And now we see how this people who are badly influenced are vandalizing, destroying businesses when they protest. We had gone to marches, and they are all peaceful.

"We are a poor and small country, but we love our country and we support the Armed Forces as well as the new president.

Otto Reich and the International Republican Institute

Honduran Destablization, Inc.

By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

When it comes to U.S. machinations and interventionism in Latin America, I'm not naïve: over the past five years, I've written two books about the inner workings of American foreign policy south of the border, as well as dozens and dozens of articles posted on the Internet and on my blog. As a result, when the Obama Administration claimed that it knew that a political firestorm was brewing in Honduras but was surprised when a military coup actually took place this strains my credibility.

Nevertheless, in the absence of cold, hard facts, I reserve judgment on whether Obama has turned into an imperialist intent on waving the Big Stick in Central America. Furthermore, the fact that Hugo Chávez of Venezuela says North American imperialism was behind the coup in Tegucigalpa does not make it so. In typical fashion, Chávez has failed to produce any shred of evidence to support his provocative allegations.

International Republican Institute

There are, however, a number of intriguing leads that point to U.S. involvement --- not in a coup per se but in indirect destabilization. Eva Golinger, author of the Chávez Code, has just published an interesting piece on her blog about the ties between the International Republican Institute (IRI) and conservative groups in Honduran society. Golinger has followed up on my extensive writings documenting the activities of the IRI, a group chaired by Senator John McCain (R-AZ). Though McCain seldom talks about it, he has gotten much of his foreign policy experience working with the operation that is funded by the U.S. government and private money. The group, which receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year, claims to promote democracy worldwide.

Golinger reveals that IRI has thrown hundreds of thousands of dollars to think tanks in Honduras that seek to influence political parties. What's more, she discloses that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided tens of millions of dollars towards "democracy promotion" in Honduras. I was particularly interested to learn that one recipient of the aid included the Honduran National Business Council, known by its Spanish acronym COHEP, a long time adversary of the Zelaya regime.

Otto Reich

Another interesting lead comes via Bill Weinberg, a thorough and dogged journalist, founder of the Web site World War 4 Report and the host of WBAI Radio's thoughtful program Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade in New York. On Sunday, Weinberg posted an intriguing article on his Web site entitled "Otto Reich behind Honduras coup?" In the piece, Weinberg discloses that the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization, known by its Spanish acronym OFRANEH, has claimed that former U.S. diplomat Otto Reich and the Washington, D.C. based Arcadia Foundation were involved in the coup.

In my first book, I documented Otto Reich's Latin American exploits in some detail. A Cuban native, Reich left the island in 1960. In 1973, while studying at Georgetown, he met someone named Frank Calzon. According to Honduras' La Prensa, Calzon was an "expert in CIA disinformation" who recruited Reich. Later, when Reich served as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela under Ronald Reagan, he established contact with Gustavo Cisneros, a media magnate, billionaire and prominent future figure in the Chávez opposition.

After his stint as ambassador, Reich went on to be a corporate lobbyist for Bacardi and Lockheed Martin, a company that sought to provide F-16 fighter planes to Chile. In 2002, he became assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs under Bush through a recess appointment. Although Reich has denied there was any U.S. role in the brief coup d'etat against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in April 2002, the veteran diplomat reportedly met regularly at the White House with alleged coup plotter Pedro Carmona. At the height of the coup in Venezuela, Reich called his old friend Cisneros twice. According to the media magnate, Reich called "as a friend" because Chávez partisans were protesting at Caracas media outlets.

Reich has also served on the board of visitors of WHINSEC, formerly known as the School of the Americas, a U.S. army institution that instructed the Latin American military in torture techniques. As a member of the board, Reich's job was to review and advise "on areas such as curriculum, academic instruction, and fiscal affairs of the institute." After leaving the Bush Administration in 2004, Reich went on to found Otto Reich Associates in Washington, D.C. On the group's Web site, you can see a photo of Reich and John McCain shaking hands. A caption from McCain reads, "Ambassador Reich has served America with distinction by representing our fundamental values of freedom and democracy around the world, and I am grateful for his support."

Reich's outfit provides services in "International Government Relations/Anti-Corruption," and "Business Intelligence/Policy Forecasting." Specifically, the group seeks to "design and implement political and business diplomacy strategies for U.S. and multinational companies to compete on an even playing field in countries with complex ethical and legal challenges," as well as "advise major and mid-size U.S. corporations on government relations to support trade and investment goals in South and Central American countries and the Caribbean," in addition to identifying and securing foreign investment and "privatization opportunities" in Latin America.

Otto Reich and The Searing Case of Hondutel

In campaign '08, Reich served as a foreign policy adviser to Republican John McCain. In an interview with Honduras' La Prensa, Reich blasted Honduran President Zelaya for cultivating ties with Hugo Chávez. Reich had particular scorn for the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, known by its Spanish acronym ALBA, an anti-free trade pact including Venezuela, Honduras, Cuba, and Bolivia. "Honduras," Reich remarked, "should be very careful because the petroleum and Chávez problem is very similar to those who sell drugs. At first they give out drugs so that victims become addicts and then they have to buy that drug at the price which the seller demands."

Reich went on to say that he was very "disappointed" in Zelaya because the Honduran President was "enormously corrupted from a financial and moral standpoint." In another interview with the Honduran media, Reich went further, remarking brazenly that "if president Zelaya wants to be an ally of our enemies, let him think about what might be the consequences of his actions and words."

When discussing Zelaya's corrupt transgressions, Reich is wont to cite the case of Honduras' state-owned telecommunications company Hondutel. In an explosive piece, the Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald reported that a company called Latin Node bribed three Hondutel officials to get choice contracts and reduced rates. Zelaya, Reich remarked to El Nuevo Herald, "has permitted or encouraged these types of practices and we will see soon that he is also behind this."

Reich would not provide details but reminded readers that Zelaya's nephew, Marcelo Chimirri, was a high official at Hondutel and had been accused of a series of illicit practices relating to Hondutel contracts. "After an outcry in Honduras," writes Bill Weinberg of World War Four Report, "Reich said he was prepared to make a sworn statement on the affair before Honduran law enforcement -- but said he would not travel to Honduras to do so, because his personal security would be at risk there." Reich's pronouncements to the Miami paper infuriated Zelaya who went on national radio and TV to announce that he would sue Reich for defamation. "We will proceed with legal action for calumny against this man, Otto Reich, who has been waging a two year campaign against Honduras," the president announced.

Turning up the heat on Chimirri, the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa denied the Hondutel official an entry visa into the United States, citing "serious cases of corruption." Zelaya may have taken the U.S. ban on his nephew to heart. Zelaya complained to Washington as recently as last December about the visa issue, urging U.S. officials to "revise the procedure by which visas are cancelled or denied to citizens of different parts of the world as a means of pressure against those people who hold different beliefs or ideologies which pose no threat to the U.S."

Bush-appointed U.S. Ambassador Charles Ford was also turning the screws on Zelaya. Speaking with the Honduran newspaper La Tribuna, Ford said that the U.S. government was investigating American telecom carriers for allegedly paying bribes to Honduran officials to engage in so-called "gray traffic" or illicit bypassing of legal telecommunications channels. The best way to combat gray traffic, Ford said, was through greater competition that in turn would drive down long distance calling rates.

Perhaps the U.S. government was using the corruption charges as ammunition against Hondutel, a state company that Reich probably would have preferred to see privatized. The Honduran elite had long wanted to break up the company. In the late 1990s, none other than Roberto Micheletti, the current coup president of Honduras, was Hondutel's CEO. At the time, Micheletti favored privatizing the firm. Micheletti later went on to become President of Honduras' National Congress. In that capacity, he was at odds with the Zelaya regime that opposed so-called "telecom reform" that could open the door to outright privatization.

The Mysterious Case of Arcadia and Robert-Carmona Borjas

Building up the case against Hondutel and Chimirri was none other than the Arcadia Foundation, a non-profit and anti-corruption watchdog that promotes "good governance and democratic institutions." For an organization that purportedly stands for transparency, the group doesn't provide much information about itself on its Web site. The two founders include Betty Bigombe, a Ugandan peace mediator and World Bank researcher, and Robert-Carmona Borjas, a Venezuelan expert in military affairs, national security, corruption, and governance. The Web site does not list any other staff members at its D.C. branch. Outside of the U.S., the organization has outlets in Spain, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina, and Guatemala.

In his columns published in the conservative Venezuelan newspaper El Universal, Borjas has gone on the attack against Chávez. In recent months, he had expressed skepticism about Obama's foreign policy openness, particularly if it meant dealing with "totalitarian" figures such as the Venezuelan President. According to his bio, Borjas left Venezuela after the 2002 coup against Chávez and sought political asylum in the U.S.

Interested in knowing where Arcadia's funding comes from? You won't get any pointers from the Web site. Click on "In The Media" however and you get an endless list of Borjas' articles and links to news pieces related to Hondutel (and I mean endless: I saw about 70 articles before I got tired and stopped counting). There's no other published research on Arcadia's site, leading one to wonder whether the organization's sole purpose is to pursue the Hondutel case. There's no evidence that Borjas knows Reich, though given their common interest (or should I say obsession) in the Hondutel affair it seems at least possible that the two might have crossed paths.

In recent months, Borjas had driven his anti-Zelaya campaign into overdrive. As Weinberg has written, "The Honduran newspapers El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) and La Prensa (San Pedro Sula) noted June 11 that Carmona-Borjas had brought legal charges against Zelaya and other figures in his administration for defying a court ruling that barred preparations for the constitutional referendum scheduled for the day Zelaya would be ousted. A YouTube video dated July 3 shows footage from Honduras' Channel 8 TV of Carmona-Borjas addressing an anti-Zelaya rally in Tegucigalpa's Plaza la Democracia to enthusiastic applause. In his comments, he accuses Zelaya of collaboration with narco-traffickers."

So, there you have it: the International Republican Institute, an enigmatic Washington, D.C.-based organization intent on driving back Hugo Chávez, an inflammatory former policymaker with business connections and a high profile effort to discredit Zelaya and the Honduran state telecommunications company. What does it all amount to? There's no smoking gun here proving U.S. involvement in the coup. Taken together however, these stories suggest destabilization efforts by certain elements in the United States --- not the Obama administration but the far right which was more allied to Bush and McCain. Perhaps if the mainstream media can drag itself away from the likes of Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin, we can get a more thorough picture of the political tensions between Washington and the Zelaya regime.

Leading “Progressive” Describes Obama-Chavez Axis

AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | July 6, 2009

The Chavez goal is not just to conquer Latin America.

A leading member of the "Progressives for Obama" network is speculating, apparently with good reason, that the leftist governments of Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez have come to an understanding that Honduras should be turned over to anti-American forces allied with the Venezuelan communist ruler.

Tom Hayden, once known as Mr. Jane Fonda because of his marriage to the pro-communist actress, has written a piece for the Talking Points Memo website about "new diplomatic collaboration" between Obama-who swore an oath to represent American interests in foreign affairs-and Chavez, who represents the interests of Iran and the Castro brothers.

The destabilization of Honduras and the attempted forced return of exiled leftist president Manuel "Mel" Zelaya could represent "a new era" of friendly U.S. relations with Chavez and other anti-American governments throughout Latin America, Hayden suggests.

In a July 2 press statement, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed the hope that Obama "grows in office" and "will eventually turn away from despots like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro, and Zelaya," who was deported by the military on orders from the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress for his violations of the law and the Constitution.

However, the Hayden article strongly suggests that the Obama policy is not the result of incompetence or inexperience but is deliberate in nature.

Hayden, once a famous anti-Vietnam War protester in his own right and former official of the Marxist Students for a Democratic Society, claims that "something profoundly new began developing between Obama and Chavez at the hemispheric conference in April in Trinidad.

According to eyewitness sources, under the apparently blind eye of the global media, the two leaders had lengthy conversations. The media covered the friendly photo of the initial handshake between the two leaders, then made much ado about an apparently-impertinent Chavez handing Obama a book in Spanish by Eduardo Galleano. What has not been reported is that Obama, leaving his advisers behind, held lengthy private conversations with Chavez where only an interpreter was present."

Hayden, who played a role during the anti-Vietnam War protests as a virtual agent of the communist regime in Hanoi, North Vietnam, writes as if he may have some inside information about what is going on. His comrade, Bill Ayers, another member of SDS who became a member of the communist terrorist Weather Underground, is known to have deep contacts with the Chavez regime through his personal appearances in Venezuela. His adopted son, Chesa Boudin, lived in Venezuela and functioned as a foreign policy adviser to Chavez.

Hayden writes that "The real story is that a gradual rapprochement-not an alliance but a dialogue-is happening between the US and Venezuela, and it began in Trinidad, was pushed by Latin American leaders and welcomed by those like Obama, who prefer diplomacy over a return to US Cold War isolation."

Hayden says that the Obama-Chavez understanding is "welcome news."

But Accuracy in Media has been receiving dozens of emails from Hondurans disappointed and angry not only with the Obama policy but the media coverage of events on the ground.

In a July 6 Wall Street Journal column, Mary Anastasia O'Grady also writes about receiving complaints from Hondurans and goes on to denounce the Obama/Chavez policy as "insane." After analyzing previous U.S. policies toward Chavez, she writes, "If Washington does not reverse course, it will be one more act of appeasement toward an ambitious and increasingly dangerous dictator."

But why would Obama be appeasing Chavez? Could the "appeasement" reflect the fact that Obama and Chavez are ideologically in sync and see events in Latin America through the same Marxist lens? That is what the Hayden article suggests.

Hayden was one of four principal initiators of the "Progressives for Obama" group. We noted in a May 2008 column that "Hayden and Ayers were key members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the violence-prone group that laid siege to college campuses in the 1960s. One of their main goals was making sure the communists conquered South Vietnam. Ayers, of course, would go on to plant bombs as a member of the SDS-spawned Weather Underground communist terrorist group. Hayden would win notoriety as Jane Fonda's husband and become a politician."

Regarding Hayden, we noted that he was caught in possession of a letter to a North Vietnamese official. The "Dear Col. Lao" letter, dated June 4, 1968, ended with, "Good fortune! Victory!" The results of the efforts of Hayden, Ayers and others were a communist victory in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese escaping as "boat people" or being sent to "re-education" camps, and a genocide in neighboring Cambodia, when the communist Khmer Rouge took power.

The Progressives for Obama membership includes two names from the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, an off-shoot of the old Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA (CPUSA). They are Carl Davidson, formerly of SDS, and Jim Campbell. Two other names come from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose Chicago branch has backed Obama from the start. They are Barbara Ehrenreich and Cornel West.

But the Chavez goal is not just to conquer Latin America. In December 2007 his regime hosted a conference devoted to staging a communist revolution in the United States. The panel discussion on "United States: A possible revolution" was described as the central event at the third Venezuela International Book Fair.

According to an article in The Militant, the newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, the forum included presentations by "Mary-Alice Waters, a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee and president of Pathfinder Press; Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer and author of The Chávez Code; Chris Carlson, a contributor to the venezuelanalysis.com website; and Tufara Waller, cultural program coordinator of the Highlander Center in Tennessee."

Other panelists were identified as "Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to the United States; former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill; August Nimtz, a University of Minnesota political science professor; William Blum, an author who has written a number of books opposing U.S. foreign policy; ex-Maryknoll priest Charles Hardy; and Dada Maheshvarananda, yoga instructor and founder of the Prout Institute."

The communist paper reported that, before there could be a revolution in the United States, Marxist forces would have to take control of Latin America. "Another idea frequently expressed by speakers from the floor and by a few panelists was that 'change has to come from the South,'" referring to Latin America, the paper said.

Almost two years later, that "change" has come to America and is threatening Honduras.

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at [email protected]

Funds would be re-routed to support the National Endowment for Democracy

(WASHINGTON) - U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, today offered an amendment to the State Department and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill (H.R. 3081) to cut funding to the Organization of American States. Statement by Ros-Lehtinen:

“The OAS is fast abandoning its founding mandate.

“From its warm overtures towards the Cuban tyrants to its knee-jerk support of Manuel Zelaya, echoing the rhetoric and agenda of autocratic leaders like Chavez, Morales, and Ortega, the OAS is losing credibility as an entity that stands for democratic institutions, human rights, and the rule of law.

“U.S. funds can be better spent elsewhere where they can truly be used to advance the freedom agenda.

“For this reason, my amendment transfers funds from the OAS to the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization which fights for fundamental freedoms and democracy worldwide and which recently recognized the brave efforts of five dissidents and peaceful opposition leaders fighting for freedom in Cuba.”

Note: Ros-Lehtinen’s amendment reduces funding to the OAS by $15 million and transfers this amount to the National Endowment for Democracy.

WorldNetDaily is reporting that Bob Basso, who has released videos urging Americans take their government back from corrupt politicians, was reportedly “summoned to the White House by President Obama to discuss the subject matter of the short films.”

In the video below, Basso, who portrays Thomas Paine, author of the “Common Sense” pamphlet that made the case for independence during the American Revolution, has called for Americans to send tea bags to Congress. Basso strongly criticizes Congress for approving the “largest spending bill in history without reading it” and takes Americans to task because “you did nothing.”

The video, “We The People Stimulus Package,” has over a million views.

Basso is a former award winning news director for NBC TV and visiting professor at UCLA.

He was scheduled to appear on the Jerry Doyle radio show but canceled after Obama had personally invited him to meet in the White House “to discuss the disturbing nature of the videos,” according to WND.

--------------------------------------

Thomas Paine, author of "Common Sense," returns to modern times to plea

U.S. backs fresh effort to end Honduran crisis

Arshad Mohammed, Reuters

Published: Tuesday, July 07, 2009

WASHINGTON - The United States threw its weight behind a fresh effort to negotiate an end to the political crisis in Honduras on Tuesday and urged ousted President Manuel Zelaya to negotiate rather than try to force his way back into power.

After meeting Zelaya, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said he had agreed to a new mediation effort that is to be led by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and that has already been accepted by Honduras' caretaker president.

She also made clear the United States does not want Zelaya, who was toppled in a June 28 coup triggered by his efforts to change presidential term limits, to try again to return to Honduras.

Zelaya tried to fly home on Sunday, but the interim government stopped his plane from landing. At least one person was killed when troops clashed with pro-Zelaya protesters who went to the airport in the capital, Tegucigalpa, to meet him.

"I believe it is a better route for him to follow at this time than to attempt to return in the face of the implacable opposition of the de facto regime," Clinton told reporters at the State Department.

"So, instead of another confrontation that might result in a loss of life, let's try the dialogue process and see where that leads, and let the parties determine all the various issues as they should," she added.

While calling for a return to constitutional and democratic order in Honduras, Clinton did not explicitly call for Zelaya to return to power, saying that this should be negotiated by the parties themselves.

The United States has repeatedly condemned the coup in the coffee and textile exporting country, the third poorest in the Americas after Haiti and Nicaragua.

Defying the international pressure, Roberto Micheletti, appointed president by Honduran lawmakers after the coup, has insisted the ousted leader was legally removed.

But in a sign he was ready to pursue diplomatic solutions, Micheletti said on Tuesday his interim government had accepted Arias as a mediator. Arias won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end political violence in Central America in the 1980s.

"We've accepted him as the mediator, given the high profile that the president of Costa Rica has," Micheletti told local radio in Tegucigalpa. But he added: "We maintain our position that President Zelaya should not return. He committed crimes and he must pay for them."

The coup has been widely condemned abroad, and the Organization of American States took the rare step of suspending Honduras on Saturday.

Micheletti's interim government says the ouster was a constitutional transition carried out by the army and supported by the Supreme Court because Zelaya had illegally tried to organize a vote on changing presidential term limits.

Zelaya took power in 2006 and had been due to leave office in 2010. He had riled the country's traditional ruling elite with his leftward shift and growing alliance with Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez.

The wife of the deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya has emerged from hiding to lead the daily protest by his supporters on the streets of the capital Tegucigalpa.

By Philip Sherwell in Tegucigalpa Published: 6:22PM BST 07 Jul 2009

Honduras' First Lady Xiomara de Zelaya (C), wife of ousted President Manuel Zelaya, joins a march demanding the restitution in power of her husbandPhoto: AFP/GETTY

Xiomara Castro de Zelaya made her first public appearance, along with one of her daughters, since slipping clandestinely back into the city from the family's country home and taking refuge at the US ambassador's residence after her husband was overthrown on June 28.

"The eyes of the world are on Honduras," she said. "President Zelaya will return. He is the president and nobody can take that away from him."

Mrs Zelaya, 49, maintained a low profile as first lady, focusing on charity and educational projects, but she joined the march by her husband's supporters as her he met US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in Washington.

Speaking in Moscow, President Barack Obama reiterated US support for efforts to reinstate Mr Zelaya - even as he pointed out that leftist leader had strongly opposed American policies.

"We respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders we agree with or not," Mr Obama said.

US officials have, however, expressed frustration that the head-strong politician did not listen when they urged him to seek a compromise before he was ousted.

Mr Zelaya has pledged to try to return to his homeland again this week, possibly attempting to smuggle himself across the border. His first attempt to come back was thwarted on Sunday when a private jet with him on board was turned away from the airport.

When violent clashes broke out as protestors awaited her husband at the airport, Mrs Zelaya revealed that she picked up the phone and called Gen Romeo Vasquez, the army chief who ordered his troops to depose her husband.

"I asked him to stop the army shooting and said 'don't stain your hands with blood'. But the phone went dead," she said.

Asked how she felt when her husband's plane was just a few hundred feet overhead above the capital, tears welled. "You can only imagine," she said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Signaling more forceful U.S. support, President Barack Obama called for the reinstatement of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Tuesday even while noting he has been no friend of American policies.

Zelaya, who was toppled in a June 28 coup triggered by his efforts to change presidential term limits, was scheduled to meet U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington at 1 p.m. (1700 GMT), another tangible sign of U.S. backing.

"America supports now the restoration of the democratically elected president of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies," Obama said.

"We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders we agree with or not," he said in a speech in Russia.

One point of disagreement with Zelaya, who took office in 2006 and has taken a leftward shift since, has been the Honduran leader's push for communist-run Cuba to rejoin a regional group over U.S. objections.

Zelaya grew close to Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez and a string of allies seeking to counter U.S. influence in the region. That group has been vocal in calling for his reinstatement.

His ouster has been a test for Obama's commitment to improve ties in a region where his predecessor, George W. Bush, was widely unpopular.

The United States had repeatedly condemned the coup in the coffee and textile exporting country, the third poorest in the Americas after Haiti and Nicaragua.

But wary of being accused of meddling, the United States has sought to play a behind the scenes role on reinstating Zelaya, with the Organization of American States (OAS) leading the effort. The OAS took the rare step of suspending Honduras on Saturday in an effort to isolate the country's interim government.

Critics have long accused the United States of interfering in its "backyard." During the Cold War Washington backed right-wing dictatorships to stop the spread of communism, and more recently the Bush administration caused a stir in 2002 when it initially appeared to welcome a short-lived coup against Chavez.

INTERIM GOVERNMENT'S ARGUMENT

Defying international pressure, caretaker President Roberto Micheletti, appointed by Honduran lawmakers after the coup, has insisted the ousted leader was legally removed.

The interim government, which thwarted Zelaya's attempt to force the issue by returning home on Sunday, says the ouster was a constitutional transition carried out by the army and supported by the Supreme Court because Zelaya had illegally tried to organize a vote on changing presidential term limits.

Zelaya, who had been due to leave office in 2010, had riled the country's traditional ruling elite with his growing alliance with Chavez.

Despite the latest U.S. display of support for Zelaya, one analyst noted Washington's delicate position.

"The U.S. is deeply concerned about the coup but at the same time has become increasingly aware that engineering Zelaya's return to Honduras is a potentially explosive proposition," said Dan Erikson of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

"The meeting with Hillary Clinton is intended to demonstrate the Obama administration's support for democracy in Honduras, but it also provides the opportunity for a frank discussion with Zelaya about his dwindling options to regain the presidency," Erikson added.

"Early U.S. support for Zelaya may begin to wane if the Obama administration starts to believe that the Honduran president is his own worst enemy and fails to install confidence in his leadership," he said.

Several OAS member states had advised Zelaya against trying to fly home on Sunday, but he went anyway. The interim government stopped his plane from landing, and at least one person was killed when troops clashed with pro-Zelaya protesters at the airport in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

A commission of Honduran private sector representatives flew to Washington on Monday to seek trade guarantees and make the case for the interim government.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States intensified efforts Tuesday to restore ousted Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya to his presidency.

As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared to meet Zelaya, President Barack Obama said his administration's support for the deposed left-leaning politician who often criticized Washington was emblematic of his administration's foreign policy.

"America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country," Obama said in a speech in Moscow. "And we haven't always done what we should have on that front."

"Even as we meet here today, America supports now the restoration of the democratically elected president of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies," he said.

"We do so not because we agree with him," Obama said of Zelaya. "We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders we agree with or not."

The administration has offered only lukewarm support for Zelaya—aimed more at bolstering his legal status as Honduras' duly elected president than supporting him personally.

Zelaya, a wealthy rancher who moved to the left after his election and allied himself with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was ousted on June 28 and sent into exile. He made an unsuccessful attempt to return home over the weekend and said Monday in Nicaragua that he hopes to win greater U.S. support for efforts to regain power.

Zelaya is opposed by all branches of the Honduran government as well as the military, and has even alienated leaders of his own party, which supported the congressional vote to install Roberto Micheletti as interim president.

But Zelaya has won backing from the Organization of American States, which suspended Honduras' membership on Saturday, and other foreign governments, including the U.S., which have threatened trade sanctions against the country.

One option being considered to end the crisis is to try to forge a compromise between Zelaya, Micheletti and the Honduran military under which the ousted president would be allowed to serve out his remaining six months in office with limited powers, according to a senior U.S. official.

Zelaya, in return, would pledge to drop his aspirations for a constitutional change that might allow him to run for another term, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomatic exchanges.

Micheletti, meanwhile, appeared to open some space for a settlement.

"We support Clinton's attempt at advancing talks in this situation, particularly her efforts at finding a peaceful solution that is consistent with our national security and sovereignty," Micheletti said in a nationally broadcast statement.

He did not repeat his earlier insistence that Zelaya's return is not negotiable, though he did say that Zelaya broke the law and has vowed not to negotiate until "things return to normal." The new government has threatened to arrest Zelaya for 18 alleged criminal acts, including treason and failing to implement more than 80 laws approved by Congress since he took office in 2006.

Michelletti's interim Honduran government—named by Congress to replace Zelaya's administration after a fight over his effort to stage a constitutional referendum that the Supreme Court ruled illegal—has been steadfast in saying he would not be allowed to return. It extended the closure of the country's main airport through Friday and parked an old plane across the runway to emphasize the point.

His supporters, meanwhile, said they would step up protests by taking their fight nationwide, including blocking major highways and border crossings to impede trucks delivering fuel and merchandise. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Barack Obama states in this letter on White House stationery that he was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu. The letter was posted by the medical center on its website.

Kristy Watanabe, the public relations specialist for the hospital refused to confirm or deny the veracity of Obama's letter claiming he was born at the hospital.

"Our comment to everyone who has been calling is that federal law does not permit us to provide any more details concerning information [about Obama's birth] without authorization from Mr. Obama," Watanabe told WND.

When WND asked Watanabe why the hospital did not contact Obama to ask for authorization, especially given the number of phone calls the hospital was receiving with the request, Watanabe said: "This is our response, and we can't say anything more than that."

Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii

WND asked if a hypothetical elected official pretended to be born at the hospital, would federal law prevent her from disclosing that? If so, which federal law would that be?

"It's just our policy that without permission we don't ever answer questions about babies bornin the hospital," she said.

This is not the first time Kapi'olani and other Hawaiian hospitals have slammed the door on WND's attempts to ascertain specifics about Obama's birth.

As reported last month, Kapi'olani declined to return any of at least four WND messages requesting comment, while Queen's Medical Center said in a prepared statement, "Due to patient privacy laws we cannot respond to your inquiries."

A private detective working in conjunction with WND's investigations last year into Obama's birthplace also visited the hospitals.

In a subsequent affidavit, he said the much-publicized online image of what the White House says is Obama's birth certificate doesn't prove any birth location.

"On October 31st, 2008, officials in Hawaii released a statement that they had examined the birth certificate, but failed to declare whether it was a Live Birth Certificate generated by a hospital with signatures of the attending physician or a 'Late Birth' Certificate of Hawaiian Birth that could have been obtained (for a child) who is one year old or older after birth by a simple affirmation of a family member," wrote investigator Jorge L. Baro, of Elite Legal Servicesin Florida.

"Only the 'Long Form' original certificate will answer all questions about the date and location of birth and confirm that it occurred in Hawaii," he said.

WND reported in the April issue of Whistleblower that Obama's step-grandmother in an interview transcript obtained by WND in Africa has claimed she was present at Obama's birth in Mombasa, Kenya.

WND is in possession of an affidavit submitted by Rev. Kweli Shuhubia, an Anabaptist minister in Kenya, who is the official Swahili translator for the annual Anabaptist Conference in Kenya, and a second affidavit signed by Bishop Ron McRae, the presiding elder of the Anabaptists' Continental Presbytery of Africa.

In his affidavit, Shuhubia asserts "it is common knowledge throughout the Christian and Muslim communities in Kenya that Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., was born in Mombasa, Kenya."

Shuhubia further states in his affidavit that he visited Obama's grandmother at her home in the village of Alego-Kogello, on Oct. 16, 2008, in order to conduct a telephone conference interview that would connect with McRae in the United States.

During the telephone interview, McRae specifically asked Sarah Obama two times, "Were you present when your grandson was born in Kenya."

"Both times she specifically replied, 'Yes,'" Shuhubia affirmed in the affidavit.

"Ms. Sarah Hussein Obama was very adamant that her grandson, Senator Barack Hussein Obama, was born in Kenya, and that she was present and witnessed his birth in Kenya, not the United States," Shuhubia continued in the affidavit.

"During the conversation, Ms. Sarah Hussein Obama never changed her reply that she was indeed present when Senator Barack Obama was born in Kenya," Shuhubia insisted in the affidavit.

The affidavit documents that President Obama's step-grandmother was asked the questions several times, both in her native language, Swahili, and in English, and that the Anabaptists conducting the interview were confident she understood clearly the questions that were asked.

"Ms. Sarah Hussein Obama never changed her reply that she was indeed present when Senator Barack Obama was born in Kenya," McRae swore in his affidavit

McRae affirmed that Obama's step-grandmother had been asked the question several times and a discussion over the conference call with those present with her in her home in Kogello made clear that she understood the question.

WND also reported the office of Hawaii Republican Gov. Linda Lingle has officially declined a request made in writing by WND in Hawaii to obtain a copy of Obama's hospital-generated long-form original birth certificate.

"It does not appear that Dr. Corsi is within any of these categories of persons with a direct and tangible interest in the birth certificate he seeks," wrote Roz Makuala, manager of constituent services in the governor's office, in a e-mail in response to WND's request for information Oct. 24.

Those listed as entitled to obtain a copy of an original birth certificate included the person born, or "registrant" according to the legal description from the governor's office, the spouse or parent of the registrant, a descendant of the registrant, a person having a common ancestor with the registrant, a legal guardian of the registrant or a person or agency acting on behalf of the registrant.

"Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform
... will immediately cease in their functions"

By DON WINNER for Panama-Guide.com -
Somebody buy Mitch a beer. And then, fly him and his friends to Washington DC to
talk to the State Department. I received this today via email, and it includes a
further definition and description of how and why Manuel Zelaya was property and
legally removed from the position of President of Honduras. This is good stuff
and should not be missed. Understanding what happened in Honduras is difficult
for foreigners, and this is the best I've seen yet to make it simple to
understand, even for those who are suffering from severe "knee-jerk-itus." The
body of the email follows, but it's not really clear what was written by "Mitch"
and where the comments from the Honduran lawyer and Constitutional scholar
start, but you get the idea... "The following was written by Octavio Sanchez. He
is a Honduran lawyer (J.D. Universidad Nacional Universidad Nacional Autonóma de
Honduras; LL.M. Harvard Law School). He also was a presidential advisor from
2002 – 2005. He served as the Honduran Minister of Culture from 2005 – 2006.
Octavio is tremendously more qualified that I am to discuss the constitution and
what happened this past weekend. I’d like to publicly thank Octavio for taking
the time to write this powerful piece describing the reality of what happened
according to the Honduran constitution." (more)

I Think The Following Was Written By
Octavio Sanchez:

If you are not familiar with the
country’s history and the Honduran constitution it is almost impossible that you
would understand what happened here this past weekend. In 1982 my country
adopted a new Constitution to allow our ordered return to democracy. After 19
previous constitution -two Spanish ones, three as part of the Republic of
Central America and 14 as an independent nation- this one, at 28, has been the
longest lasting one. It has lasted for so long because it responds and adapts to
our changing reality, as seen in the fact that out of its original 379 articles,
7 of them have been completely or partially repealed, 18 have been interpreted
and 121 have been reformed.

It also includes 7 articles that cannot
be repealed or amended because they address issues that are critical for us.
Those unchangeable articles deal with the form of government, the extent of our
borders, the number of years of the presidential term; two prohibitions -one to
reelect presidents and another one to change the article that states who can’t
run for president- and one article that penalizes the abrogation of the
Constitution.

In these 28 years Honduras has found
legal ways to deal with its own problems. Each and every successful country
around the world lived similar trial and error processes until they were able to
find legal vehicles that adapt to their reality. France had 13 Constitutions
between 1789 and the adoption of the current one in 1958 which has passed 22
constitutional revisions. The USA had one before this one which has been amended
27 times since 1789 and the British –pragmatic as they are- in 900 years have
change it so many times that they have never taken the time to compile their
Constitution into a single body of law.

Having explained that, under our
Constitution, what happened in Honduras this last Sunday? Soldiers arrested and
took out of the country a Honduran citizen that, the day before, through his
actions had stripped himself of the presidency of Honduras.

These are the hard facts. Last Friday
Mister Zelaya, with his cabinet, issued a decree ordering all government
employees to take part in the “Public Opinion Poll to convene a National
Constitutional Assembly” (Presidential Decree PCM-020). The decree was published
on Saturday on the official newspaper. With this event, Mister Zelaya triggered
a constitutional protection that automatically removed him from office.

The key legal elements for that
constitutional protection to be triggered are the following ones. Constitutional
assemblies are convened to write new constitutions. In Honduras, you have 365
articles that can be changed by Congress. When Zelaya published that decree to
regulate an “opinion poll” about the possibility of convening a national
assembly he acted against the unchangeable articles of the constitution that
deal with the prohibition of reelecting a president and of extending his term.
His actions showed intent.

How is that kind of intent sanctioned in
our Constitution? With the immediate removal of those involved in the action as
stated in article 239 of the Constitution which reads: “No citizen that has
already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or
Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as
those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease
in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of
10 years.” Notice that the rule speaks about intent and that it also says
immediately –as in instant, as in no trial required, as in no impeachment
needed.

This immediate sanction might sound
draconian, but every country knows its own enemies and it is the black letter of
our supreme law. Requiring no previous trial might be crazy, but in Latin
America a President is no ordinary citizen, it is the most powerful figure of
the land and historically the figure has been above the law. To prevent that
officer from using its power to stay in office Honduras has constitutional rules
such as the mentioned one.

I am extremely proud of my compatriots.
Finally, we have decided to stand up and become a country of laws, not men. From
now on, here, no one will be above the law.

It appears as if the Obama Administration is continuing down it’s coarse of appeasing tyrannical dictators; a meeting between Secretary of StateHillary Clinton and Manuel Zelaya is expected to happen this week in Washington D.C. Manuel Zelaya was ousted in Honduras after trying to change the country’s constitution all on his own. He wanted to stay in power ala Hugo Chavez.

Hillary Clinton Manuel Zelaya Meeting

Manuel Zelaya tried unsuccessfully to return to Honduras on Sunday, he has been in exile since Honduran military forces seized him and removed him from power. The Obama Administration has said that the “coup” that took place was illegal. In reality, the attempted seizure of power by Zelaya was illegal; Obama apparently had no problem with that.

Now, despite a huge outcry in favor of the Honduran people and their new government, Hillary Clinton will meet with Manuel Zelaya in our Nations capitol on Tuesday. Oh, to be a fly on the wall to hear the promises and regrets that Clinton will extend to Zelaya on behalf of the Obama Administration.

“Our goal remains the restoration of … the democratic order in Honduras, and we renew our call on all political and social actors in Honduras to find a peaceful solution to this crisis,” he told reporters

He was asked what restoring democratic order meant, he then replied that it meant restoring the democratically elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. Hillary Clinton has made no public remarks about the future meeting.

It is unbelievable to me that the Obama Administration is taking the side of a man who has completely upended democracy in a once stable Central American country. We should know more after Hillary Clinton and Manuel Zelaya meet next week.

The most notable religious event in Zelaya's past occurred in June of 1975, when he was 22. His family's Los Horcones ranch was the scene of the massacre of 15 priests, campesinos, and students, who were involved in the church's struggle for social justice with wealthy landowners. Their bodies were later found at the bottom of a recently dynamited well and Zelaya's father, whose .22 rifle was linked to the killings, was convicted of murder, serving five years of a 20 year sentence. After the massacre, the federal government ordered all priests, monks, and nuns to leave the area for their safety.

AFP - Ousted President Manuel Zelaya was set to return to Honduras Sunday, a week after the army threw him out, amid fears of clashes after coup leaders threatened to arrest him on his return.

The Organization of American States suspended the Central American country late Saturday -- in the first such move since the exclusion of Cuba in 1962 -- for failing to reinstate Zelaya.

Members of the pan-American body slammed the leaders of the coup which saw the army remove Zelaya in his pajamas last Sunday at the peak of a dispute with the courts, politicians and the army over his plans to change the constitution.

After a week of mostly peaceful protests by Zelaya's supporters and detractors, thousands of Zelaya backers -- many from labor unions and indigenous groups -- gathered in the capital in order to meet him at the airport.

In a climate of suspicion and anger, many said they were prepared for violence.

"I imagine there'll be blood and I'm ready for it. We're not afraid," said Marisol Velasquez, who said she was roughed up by soldiers at roadblocks on her three-day journey to reach the capital.

Meanwhile in Washington, 33 out of 34 members of the OAS voted in favor of suspending Honduras in an extraordinary late night session.

Their resolution was recommended by OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza, who lamented increasing polarization and tension in Honduras on a brief visit there Friday.

"The de facto authorities in Tegucigalpa are not disposed to restore Zelaya," Insulza said.

Zelaya meanwhile confirmed at the meeting that he would return to Honduras Sunday.

"I am very optimistic because everyone has repudiated and rejected these acts" Zelaya said earlier, insisting his country lived "under a regime of terror."

Thousands have demonstrated daily since the president was bundled away to Costa Rica last Sunday, and brief clashes have broken out between the army and protesters.

It was unclear exactly how many people had been injured and detained, amid growing indignation from international rights groups.

The emergency OAS meeting was also attended by Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, who were expected to accompany Zelaya to Honduras.

President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, who was also expected to join them, has said he was prepared violence in Honduras.

Catholic leaders in Honduras warned Saturday of a potential bloodbath.

"We think that a return to the country at the moment could provoke a bloodbath," Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez -- the capital's archbishop -- said on national radio and television.

"To this day no Honduran has died. Please think, because afterwards it will be too late," Rodriguez added.

Insulza agreed that Zelaya's planned return to Honduras was dangerous.

"I think there are risks, of course," the OAS secretary general told reporters. "If you ask if it is a safe return, of course not."

Interim President Roberto Micheletti's supporters say the army was justified in ousting Zelaya -- on orders of Congress and the Supreme Court -- because he had called a referendum to change the constitution that they claim he planned to use to extend his rule.

The interim government has said it may consider holding early elections to end the political impasse, but now looked set to try to hunker down until scheduled elections in November.

A freezing of millions of dollars of international aid, regional trade blockades and recalls of foreign ambassadors have already hit the country in the past week.

Night-time curfews -- which suspend some freedoms guaranteed by the constitution -- and media blackouts have increased tension in one of Latin America's poorest countries.

Chavez, Zelaya's main backer, has said that Venezuela would suspend key shipments of oil to Honduras, which he said would drive up gasoline prices.

OAS Suspends Honduras; Zelaya's Vow to Return Stirs Controversy

The Organization of American States meets in emergency session, in Washington, to consider suspending Honduras' membership because of the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

TEGUCIGALPA -- The stage was set on Sunday for a dramatic confrontation in Honduras, with plans by ousted president Manuel Zelaya to return to the country to take up his post, as the Organization of American States kicked out the Central American nation for refusing to restore him.

At an emergency meeting in Washington, 33 nations backed the resolution suspending Honduras's membership, with none opposed and Honduras abstaining. It was the first time in nearly 20 years that the OAS took such a step due to a military coup.

"The suspension takes effect immediately," Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said, reading the resolution before the body. The move temporarily sidelines Honduras from any participation in the OAS, but obliges it to continue observing the body's rules in areas such as human rights.

It also deepens the poor Central American nation's international isolation ahead of a looming showdown on Sunday in the Honduran capital, where Mr. Zelaya plans to return despite warnings of a potentially bloody confrontation and the interim government's vow to arrest him and put him on trial.

The small country's new leaders had told the OAS that Honduras would pull out of the body rather than let Mr. Zelaya back in the presidential seat. In an odd turn of events, the OAS said on Saturday that Honduras couldn't withdraw because its provisional government wasn't recognized by the international community.

Mr. Zelaya, a Stetson hat-wearing leftist who is close allies to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, told Venezuela's state-run Telesur television network that he planned to fly to Honduras on Sunday along with Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner and Ecuador's Rafael Correa, also leftists.

"We will arrive at the international airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras with several presidents, (and) members of international organizations," Mr. Zelaya told Caracas-based station Telesur, according to the Associated Press.

The country's acting leaders, however, don't appear to be bluffing about arresting the president if he returns. In the days after he was sent packing to Costa Rica by Honduras' military, the provisional government has accused Mr. Zelaya of multiple crimes, from treason to drug trafficking.

If Mr. Zelaya returns, the chances of a violent confrontation appeared high. Responding to a call by the ousted president, thousands of his supporters turned up at the Tegucigalpa airport to show their support.

Honduras' influential Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez, the highest ranking Catholic Church official in the country, went on national television to urge the exiled president not to come back.

"We think that a return to the country at this time could unleash a bloodbath in the country," Cardinal Rodriguez said. "To this day, no Honduran has died. Please meditate because afterwards it would be too late."

The prelate also criticized Mr. Zelaya, suggesting the Church was throwing its weight behind the provisional government. "The day of your swearing in, you clearly quoted the three commandments of the sacred law of God: Not to lie, not to steal, and not to kill," said the Cardinal, who was seen as a leading candidate to succeed the late Pope John Paul II.

Mr. Zelaya, the son of a wealthy farmer who ran for office as a centrist, sharply polarized the country when his politics took a left turn and he aligned his government closely with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Honduras joined Mr. Chavez's trade pact, received cut rate oil from Venezuela, and embarked on an attempt to rewrite the constitution that critics say would have let Mr. Zelaya extend his term.

To that end, Mr. Zelaya wanted to hold a referendum on whether voters wanted to change the constitution. The vote was declared illegal by Honduras's Supreme Court, but the president vowed to press on. Last Sunday, the day the referendum was set to take place, soldiers stormed the presidential residence and seized the leader at gunpoint. Congress later swore in Roberto Micheletti, the president of Congress.

So far, attempts at diplomacy have failed. OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza arrived on Friday for talks with leading politicians and figures like Cardinal Rodriguez. But Mr. Insulza left soon after, saying the interim government didn't want to budge. "The break in the constitutional order persists and those that did this don't seem to have any intention of reversing that situation," he told a news conference late on Friday.

Mr. Insulza said that officials on Friday presented him with a large quantity of charges against the former leader but that the diplomat still wasn't convinced the coup plotters took the right course of action. "If someone has an accusation against a president, they make them," Mr. Insulza said. "There are mechanisms to force him out of office. They have to do it in a legal way."

Some in Honduras, however, criticize Mr. Insulza for wanting to expel Honduras from the group while at the same time pushing to allow Cuba back in despite that country's Communist dictatorship.

The provisional government insists there was no coup and that the ouster of the president was legal, saying Mr. Zelaya had ignored court orders to stop the referendum, and that his arrest was ordered by the Supreme Court. But the new leaders have so far been unable to explain several key questions: Why was a court arrest warrant carried out by the military instead of the police? And why was the president exiled instead of jailed?

Since Mr. Zelaya's ouster, the army's top legal adviser, Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza has told reporters the military decided to exile Mr. Zelaya to avoid the blooshed that would have ensued had Mr. Zelaya been held for trial.

Making matters worse, the provisional government has also decreed that individuals can be arrested with no charge for up to 72 hours, extended a nighttime curfew, and cracked down on media outlets that oppose the coup. The army also appears to have limited freedom of movement. According to local media and emails sent to The Wall Street Journal, soldiers have shot out the tires of several buses packed with pro-Zelaya supporters to prevent them from coming to the capital from rural areas, where Mr. Zelaya's support is higher.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Organization of American States suspended Honduras on Saturday after a caretaker government refused to restore President Manuel Zelaya, who was toppled in a military coup last weekend.

The OAS took the rare step to suspend one of its members at a meeting in Washington after Honduras' interim rulers ignored an OAS ultimatum to restore Zelaya.

Zelaya, a leftist who took power in 2006 and had been due to leave office in 2010, was ousted by troops and sent into exile last Sunday after a dispute over presidential term limits.

The suspension was with immediate effect, according to a resolution read at the special session late on Saturday night.

An OAS suspension could complicate access to credits from regional lender Inter-American Development Bank for Honduras, which is the third poorest country in the Americas after Nicaragua and Haiti. The IADB said last week it was suspending loans over the coup.

Honduras, a coffee and textile exporter, is only the second country suspended by the Western Hemisphere's top diplomatic body after Cuba, which was barred in 1962 as Fidel Castro took the island toward communism in the years after his 1959 revolution.

Zelaya, a wealthy businessman who edged to the left after he came to power, was ousted last Sunday. He had upset the ruling elite, including members of his own Liberal Party, with what critics say was an illegal attempt to lift presidential term limits and by establishing closer ties with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a U.S. adversary.

The Obama administration, European governments and Zelaya's left-wing allies have condemned his ouster, which has triggered the gravest political crisis in Central America in decades. The caretaker government has said it legally removed a president who violated the constitution.

OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulaza told the special meeting earlier that the region should suspend Honduras after the interim rulers who took power after the coup rejected an OAS demand to reinstate Zelaya by Saturday.

"They understand the risks of eventual sanctions, especially in the economic field," he said. "Due to the situation, I believe there is little alternative.

INTERIM GOVERNMENT DEFIANT

Insulza, who visited the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa on Friday, said the interim government showed no willingness to reinstate Zelaya or recognize there had been a rupture in the constitutional order.

"The interim regime has not said so, but their lack of international recognition a week after the coup is worrying the de facto government," the OAS chief said.

The interim government remained defiant, announcing it would renounce the OAS charter, and has rallied supporters on the streets of the capital and other cities in a show of support.

"It is better to pay this high price... than live undignified and bow the our heads to the demands of foreign governments," said Roberto Micheletti, named caretaker president by the Honduran Congress after Zelaya's ouster.

In Tegucigalpa, several thousand Zelaya supporters marched toward the presidential palace on Saturday, observed by troops posted in strategic spots and a military helicopter overhead.

A night-time curfew is still in place but the capital city is mostly calm during the day.

Some of Zelaya's left-wing allies have said they would travel with the exiled leader to Honduras on Sunday, though that plan seemed to be in doubt. The interim government has said it would arrest the ousted leader if he returns.

Gerald Warner is an author, broadcaster, columnist and polemical commentator who writes about politics, religion, history, culture and society in general.

Barack Obama sells out America and its loyal allies to favour leftists

Barack Obama’s foreign policy blundering is now verging on the surreal. When Manuel Zelaya, the socialist president of Honduras, was overthrown, Obama first declared himself “deeply concerned”, then denounced the coup as illegal; now, with the support of the Obama White House, the Organisation of American States has given Honduras a three-day deadline to reinstate Zelaya. This is madness.

Zelaya was unseated by the army, but this was no ordinary military coup. The armed forces were carrying out a decision of the Honduran Supreme Court after it had declared unconstitutional a referendum Zelaya was attempting to hold to extend the length of time he could stay in office. This is a well-known ploy among leftist Latin American leaders in the mould of Hugo Chavez, the Marxist president of Venezuela.

By declaring that the Honduran constitution does not permit such a populist coup by the president, the Supreme Court was upholding the rule of law. Zelaya was attempting to subvert it. By removing him, the army upheld the constitution. Does Obama believe he has the power to overrule the US Supreme Court and the American Constitution by extending his period in office by plebiscite? If not, why should the Honduran constitution be disregarded by that country’s president?

Zelaya is a Chavez-style leftist, aiming at taking Honduras out of the American sphere of influence and into alliance with Marxist Venezuela. Now it emerges his strongest ally is the American president. This is perverse beyond belief and deeply damaging to America’s interests. I ask again: why does Barack Obama hate America?

Honduras's Coup Is President Zelaya's Fault

By Alvaro Vargas Llosa

Wednesday, July 1, 2009; 5:49 PM

Any time a bunch of soldiers break into a presidential palace, pick up the president and put him on a flight to exile, as happened in Honduras last Sunday, you have a "coup." But, unlike most coup targets in Latin America's tortuous republican history, Honduras's deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, bears the biggest responsibility for his overthrow.

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A member of the rancid oligarchy he now decries, Zelaya took office in 2006 as the leader of one of the two center-right parties that have dominated Honduran politics for decades. His general platform, his support for the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and his alliances with business organizations gave no inkling of the fact that halfway into his term he would become a political cross-dresser.

Suddenly, in 2007, he declared himself a socialist and began to establish close ties with Venezuela. In December of that year, he incorporated Honduras into Petrocaribe, a mechanism set up by Hugo Chávez for lavishing oil subsidies on Latin American and Caribbean countries in exchange for political subservience. Then his government joined the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA), Venezuela's answer to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, ostensibly a commercial alliance but in practice a political conspiracy that seeks to expand populist dictatorship to the rest of Latin America.

Last year, following the script originally laid out by Chávez in Venezuela and adopted by Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Zelaya announced that he would hold a referendum to set up a constituent assembly that would change the constitution that barred him from reelection. In the next few months, every legal body in Honduras -- the electoral tribunal, the Supreme Court, the attorney general, the human rights ombudsman -- declared the referendum unconstitutional. According to the Honduran constitution (articles 5, 373 and 374), presidential term limits cannot be changed under any circumstance; only Congress can modify the constitution; and political institutions are not subject to referendums. Honduras's Congress, Zelaya's own Liberal Party and a majority of Hondurans (in various polls) expressed their horror at the prospect of having Zelaya perpetuate himself and bring Honduras into the Chávez fold. In defiance of court orders, Zelaya persisted. Surrounded by a friendly mob, he broke into the military installations where the ballots were kept and ordered them distributed. The courts declared that Zelaya had placed himself outside the law, and Congress began an impeachment procedure.

This is the context in which the military, in an ill-advised move that turned a perfectly legal mechanism for stopping Zelaya into a coup, expelled the president. The fact that the constitutional procedure was subsequently followed by having Congress appoint the head of the legislative body, Roberto Micheletti, as interim president, and that the elections scheduled for November have not been canceled, is not enough to dissipate the cloud of illegitimacy that hangs over the new government. This factor has disarmed Zelaya's critics in the international community in the face of a well-coordinated campaign led by Chávez to reinstate him and denounce the coup as an oligarchic assault on democracy.

That said, the international response, seeking to reinstate Zelaya without any mention of his illegal acts, has been highly inadequate. The Organization of American States, led by its secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, has acted like Venezuela's poodle. At Chávez's request, Insulza went to Nicaragua, where a summit of the anti-democratic ALBA group became the hemisphere's political center of gravity after the coup. Insulza and other populist presidents said nothing about Zelaya's dictatorial conduct leading up to last Sunday's events and simply echoed Venezuela's self-serving stance. Efforts by other countries, including the United States and many South American governments, to put some nuance into the public statements were neutralized by the spectacle unfolding in Nicaragua, which was widely reported across the Spanish-speaking world. It was sad to see Insulza suddenly remember his organization's Inter-American Democratic Charter in relation to Honduras -- the same rules of democratic conduct that Chávez, Morales, Correa and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega have violated on numerous occasions while the OAS looked the other way.

The crisis in Honduras should bring to people's attention this truth about Latin America today: The gravest threat to liberty comes from elected populists who are seeking to subject the institutions of the law to their megalomaniac whims. Given that scenario, the hemisphere's response to Honduras's crisis has undermined those who are trying to prevent populism from taking the region back to the times when it was forced to choose between left-wing revolution and military dictatorships.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is the editor of "Lessons From the Poor" and director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute. He is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. His e-mail address is [email protected].

All right already. I won't call Obama a Marxist in this column. Instead, I'll point to some signs that indicate that Barack and Karl might well be soul mates. At least, they have similar attitudes about capital, labor and profits, er, surplus value.

Liberals, even those of the Marxist variety, take umbrage when you point out their ideological kinship with Marxism.

I suppose this dates back to the days when being a communist was tantamount to being an enemy of the United States, in that there was a global communist movement intent on – and coming darn close to – world domination. Though global communism has been defeated, there remains a strong contingent among us, whose nerve center is the Democratic Party leadership under President Obama, committed to obliterating America's free market.

Without getting into the intricacies of Marxist theory, suffice it to say that at the core of this political and economic philosophy is a belief in the historical class struggle. The capitalist (bourgeois) exploits the industrial worker (proletarian) by underpaying him and adding on unnecessary charges to the prices of goods and services, driving up costs to the consumer, and pocketing the profits.

In "Basic Economics," Thomas Sowell puts it this way: "Profits may be the most misconceived subject in economics. Socialists have long regarded profits as simply 'overcharge,' as Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw called it, or a 'surplus value' as Karl Marx called it." The theory is that under socialism or Marxism, these surplus charges would be eliminated and goods and services would become more affordable.

But in reality, socialism doesn't make goods and services more affordable, but less so. As Dr. Sowell explains: "The hope for profits and the threat of losses is what forces a business owner in a capitalist economy to produce at the lowest cost and sell what the customers are most willing to pay for. ... Under socialism (there is) far less incentive to be as efficient ... much less to keep up with changing conditions and respond to them quickly." With less incentive for efficiencies and cost control, the prices of goods might well be higher.

Profits are not arbitrary charges added on to the costs of producing goods and services; nor are they attributable to artificially high prices charged by those motivated by greed. Indeed, writes Sowell, most of the great fortunes in American history were amassed when entrepreneurs were able to reduce costs and charge lower prices and to increase their volume sales to mass markets.

You get the point. Capitalists don't view profits as evil or the product of greed. Their opponents – call them Marxists, fascists, socialists, radical liberals or whatever – do. Which brings us back to Barack Obama.

Both his father, Barack Obama Sr., and his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, were communists. His church of choice was one of black liberation theology, whose Marxist roots are inarguable. He associated with far leftists on the "organizing" streets of Chicago, including Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Mentorship and associations are one thing, but what have Obama's words and actions revealed about his attitudes toward labor, capital, profits and government control of business and industry?

Well, he said that he would raise capital gains tax rates, even if it reduced revenues, as a matter of fairness. It's only fair to make everyone poorer if you believe profits are inherently evil.

He told Joe the Plumber he wants to spread the wealth around. He talked about confiscating Exxon Mobil's profits and giving them to consumers, saying, "They are not going to give up those profits easily." He called Chrysler creditors "speculators" and castigated them for refusing to accept his extortionist reorganization plan. He berated Wall Street for making profits, saying, "Now is not (the) time" for them to "rake in profits." He and his wife even railed against the pursuit of profit in their respective commencement addresses.

He abused the power of his office to steal money from GM and Chrysler shareholders and transfer it to the proletariat, I mean, the United Auto Workers. He redistributed taxpayer money from those who have paid their mortgages to those who have not.

He is desperately trying to spread the misery and impoverish businesses and individuals through his cap and tax plan, which no proponent of economic growth and prosperity would consider supporting. And in addition to gobbling up other businesses and industries, he is trying to nationalize medicine – to siphon off the evil surplus value charged by doctors and insurance companies – on the flawed Marxist theory that he can reduce costs overall, when the reason health care costs have already skyrocketed is that market forces have been suppressed in the industry.

You don't have to call him a Marxist, but at least understand where his heart is.

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